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REV.  H.  B.  MONGES, 

2233  CHANNING  WAY 

Berkeley,  Cal. 


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A    MAYAN    INDIAN. 


[Frontispiece. 


THE 

AMERICAN  EGYPT 

A  RECORD  OF  TRAVEL  IN  YUCATAN 


BY 

CHANNING  ARNOLD 

AND 

FREDERICK  J.  TABOR  FROST 


WITH    ILLUSTRATIONS,   MAP   AND   FLANS 


NEW  YORK 
DOUBLEDAY,   PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1909 


PRINTED  BY 

HAZELL,  WATSON  AND  VINEY,   LD 

LONDON  AND  AYLESBURY, 

ENGLAND. 


ALICE  ALTHEA  ARNOLD 


VJWUUn.l   1  ^U.M. 


PREFACE 

IN  publishing  the  present  volume,  it  is  our  privilege  to 
produce  the  first  book  ever  written  by  Englishmen  on 
Yucatan — that  Egypt  of  the  New  World,  where,  it  is  now 
generally  admitted.  Central  American  Civilisation  reached  its 
apogee — and  to  be,  for  the  present  at  least,  the  only  Englishmen 
who  can  claim  to  have  explored  the  uncivilised  north-eastern 
portions  of  the  Peninsula  and  the  islands  of  her  eastern  coast. 
Mr.  A.  P.  Maudslay,  who  in  1889  made  a  lengthy  stay  at  and 
a  detailed  survey  of  Chichen,  has  done  yeoman  service  to 
Central  American  archaeology  by  his  years  of  patient  work 
(alas  !  too  little  appreciated)  in  Guatemala,  in  the  Usumacinta 
district  and  Southern  Mexico. 

Work,  and  wonderful  work,  has  been  done  in  civilised 
Yucatan  by  bands  of  earnest  labourers  from  the  States, 
from  Germany,  and  from  France.  Among  these  the  most 
notable  is  the  late  J.  L.  Stephens,  the  American  traveller, 
who  visited  Yucatan  in  1842,  and  who  is  justly  regarded 
as  the  Father  of  Mayan  archaeology.  In  his  footsteps  has 
followed,  during  recent  years,  Mr.  Edward  H.  Thompson, 
one  of  the  most  painstaking  and  accomplished  of  American 
archaeologists.  France  has  been  represented  by  M.  Desir6 
Chamay,  and  latterly  by  Count  Perigny.  Of  the  German 
field-workers  the  most  assiduous  have  been  Professor  Seler, 
T.  Maler,  and  K.  Sapper;  while  all  who  wish  to  see  the 
Mayan  problem  solved  must  pay  a  meed  of  thanks  to  the 
eminent  Professor  Forstemann  for  his  attempts  to  decipher 
the  inscriptions,  even  if  they  feel,  as  do  we,  that  he  has 
allowed  his  enthusiasm  to  lead  him  too  far  astray  on  a 
will-o'-the-wisp  path  of  inquiry  and  theory. 

The  problem  reviewed  in  this  volume  is  a  profoundly 
interesting  one.  The  ethnology  of  the  Americas  presents 
a  problem  as  yet  unsolved.  The  average  ethnologist  has 
been  content  to  label  the  vast  affiliated  hordes  and  tribes 


viii  PREFACE 

of  the  two  Americas  "  Mongolian."  But  the  American 
ethnological  puzzle  is  deepened  by  the  existence  of  what  is 
known  as  the  Mayan  civilisation  and  its  many  ramifications 
throughout  Central  America.  WTience  came  these  building 
races  ?  What  cradle-land  is  one  to  assign  to  architects 
whose  achievements  often  rival  in  grandeur  the  monuments 
of  Egypt  ?  How  is  one  to  believe  that  they  were  ordinary 
members,  or  members  at  all,  of  that  great  affiliated  race  of 
American  Indians  whose  ideas  of  building  were  represented 
in  the  north  by  the  snow-house  of  the  Eskimo  and  the  wigwam 
of  the  Sioux,  and  in  the  south  by  the  leaf-shelters  of  the 
cannibal  inhabitants  of  the  forests  of  Brazil  ? 

In  the  later  chapters  of  this  volume  we  endeavour  to 
analyse  the  evidence  which  we  and  others  have  collected  on 
this  thorny  Mayan  problem.  We  cannot  too  strongly  urge 
that  the  time  has  come  to  drop  once  and  for  all  the  Toltec 
theory.  We  know  that  we  are  thus  taking  up  a  position  in 
direct  opposition  to  four-fifths  of  the  students  and  scholars 
who  have  worked  in  the  field  ;  but  we  are  as  convinced  that 
the  race  which  built  the  ruined  palaces  and  temples  of  Yucatan 
is  not  a  vanished  race  as  we  are  convinced  that  the  Toltec 
theory  is  a  gross  error. 

And  if  we  are  obstinate  as  to  the  origin  of  Mayan  civilisa- 
tion, we  fear  we  must  be  charged,  too,  with  gross  obstinacy 
in  the  matter  of  deciding  the  age  of  the  ruins.  We  would 
like  to  believe,  with  those  more  sanguine,  that  the  wonderful 
structures  have  a  history  rivalling  Memphis  or  Syene.  But 
we  cannot  believe  it,  and  we  hope  that  those  who  read  this 
volume  will  acquit  us  of  coming  to  this  very  disappointing 
decision  on  flimsy  grounds.  In  such  matters  no  grounds 
but  practical  ones  are  to  be  trusted,  and  we  claim  that  an 
expert  builder's  careful  examination  of  the  ruins,  after  due 
allowance  is  made  for  the  friability  of  the  limestone  used 
in  such  a  climate  as  Yucatan  enjoys,  will  prove  to  any  open- 
minded  inquirer  that  the  oldest  building  still  standing,  so 
to  speak,  intact,  has  not  seen  more  than  six  centuries. 

In  the  present  volume  it  has  been  impossible  to  do  more 
than  "  open  the  case  "  for  the  theory  we  propound,  viz.  that 
America's  first  architects  were  Buddhist  immigrants  from  Java 
and  Indo-China.  To  attempt  to  prove  this  would  require 
much  time  and  money  ;  but,  alas  !  archaeology  is  not  such  a 
popular  and  paying  science  as  will  allow  those  without  large 
means  at  their  disposal  to  follow  up  their  theories 


PREFACE  ix 

We  should  need  many  months  of  careful  study  in  Java, 
the  Malay  Peninsula,  Ceylon  and  India.  If  investigations 
there  proved  satisfactory,  the  next  step  would  be  to  follow 
the  route  we  have  suggested  as  that  taken  by  the  migrators 
in  a  vessel  as  similar  as  possible  to  those  it  may  be  presumed 
they  employed.  Along  the  route  a  more  minute  study  of  the 
archaeological  remains  on  the  islands  of  the  Caroline  and 
Marshall  groups  than  has  yet  been  undertaken  could  be  made. 
Thence  the  voyage  would  be  continued  to  the  American 
mainland,  where  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  country 
between  the  coast  and  Copan  would  probably  yield  valuable 
data.  But  such  an  expedition  would  require  an  outlay  of 
thousands  of  pounds  and  would  occupy  two  or  three  years, 
much  of  which  would  have  to  be  spent  under  such  hardships 
as  only  enthusiasts  could  contemplate. 


London,  1908. 


C.  A. 

F.  J.  T.  F. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

P&OB 

A  bird's-eye  view  of  MEXICO I 

CHAPTER   II 
MEXICO  CITY  AND  THE  MEXICANS 2$ 

CHAPTER   III 
YUCATAN  AND  HER  HISTORY 45 

CHAPTER  IV 
FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  YUCATAN $7 

CHAPTER  V 
A  YUCATECAN   BREAKFAST,  AND  OTHER  "SIGHTS"  .        /I 

CHAPTER   VI 
AMID  THE  PALACES  OF  THE  ITZAS  .....        82 

CHAPTER   VII 
VALLADOLID  AND  AFTER IO4 

CHAPTER  VIII 
IN  THE  FOOTSTEPS  OF  CORTES 12/ 

CHAPTER    IX 
EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO   MORELOS I43 

CHAPTER   X 

IN   SEARCH  OF  THE  MAYAN   MECCA 164 

xi 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XI 

PAGE 

ON  THE  SOUTHERN   SIERRAS 1 85 

CHAPTER  XII 
COPAN  AND  QUIRIGUA 2O4 

CHAPTER  XIII 
PALENQUE,  MENCHE,  AND  ON   THE  USUMACINTA    .  .      214 

CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  ANCIENT  MAYANS 226 

CHAPTER  XV 
WHO  WERE  THE  MAYANS? 242 

CHAPTER  XVI 
WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS?      .  .  .      257 

CHAPTER   XVII 
THE  AGE  OF  THE  RUINS 283 

CHAPTER   XVIII 
HIEROGLYPHICS  AND  PAINTINGS 298 

CHAPTER    XIX 
SLAVERY  ON   THE  HACIENDAS 32 1 

CHAPTER   XX 
YUCATAN   AS   IT   IS   TO-DAY  AND  THE  YUCATECANS  .      S37 

CHAPTER  XXI 
THE   GREEN   GOLD  OF  YUCATAN 361 

CHAPTER   XXII 
FLORA  AND  FAUNA 368 

INDEX .        .     387 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


A  MAYAN  INDIAN Frontispiece 

UNLOADING    BANANAS focing   page    20 

RURALES    (mounted    POLICE)    AT   VERA    CRUZ  .  .  ,,  ,,20 

EL   CASTILLO,    CHICKEN    ITZA „  ,,84 

THE    CARACOL,    CHICKEN    ITZA ,,  ,,    lOO 

THE   TENNIS   COURT,    CHICKEN    ITZA  ....,,  ,,    lOO 

THE    NUNNERY,    CKICHEN    ITZA ,,  ,,    I20 

EL   MECO,    EAST   COAST    OF   YUCATAN         .  .  .  .  „  ,,    I44 

ARCHED    GATEWAY,    LABNA „  ,,    I96 

THE   PALACE,    SAYIL „  „    I96 

THE   PALACE.    UXMAL „  ,,    202 

BAS-RELIEFS   ON   ALTAR   AT   COPAN  .  ...  On  page   209 

FRIEZE.    PIEDRAS   NEGRAS foCing  page   2X2 

STELA   AT   COPAN    ........„,,       2l2 

ELLIPTICAL   TABLET   IN   STUCCO   AT   PALENQUE  .  .  on  page   217 

BAS-RELIEF   OF   PRIEST's   FIGURE,    PALENQUE  .  .  ,,       ,,       220 

BAS-RELIEF   OF   PRIEST'S    FIGURE,    PALENQUE  .  .  ,,        ,,        221 

CARVING  OF  JAGUAR facing  page  240 

COLOSSAL   HEAD    DISCOVERED    BY    AUTHORS   AT    CANCUN        ,,  ,,        24O 

MAYAN  ARCH on  page  264 

THE  NUNNERY,  UXMAL  (illustrating     elaboration     of     Mayan 

ornamentation)      .......  facing  page  268 

STELAE   AT   COPAN ,,  ,,    284 

DAY   SIGNS         (HIEROGLYPHICS)       .  .  .  .  on  pages   304-307 

MONTH    SIGNS    (  ,,  )        .  .  .  .  ,,       ,,        3O7-3IO 

YEAR   AND    CYCLE   SIGNS    (HIEROGLYPHICS)    .  .  .  0«   page   3 II 

xiii 


XIV 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACADE   OF   BUILDING   AT   KABAH    . 
TYPES   OF   MAYAN    WOMEN    AND    MEN 
HACIENDA    CHILDREN       . 
INDEPENDENT    INDIANS 

HENEQUEN    FIBRE    IN   DRYING-GROUND 
THE    FIBRE    MILL     .... 


facing  page  318 

„  334 
,.  356 
..  356 
„  366 
..   366 


MAP    AND    PLANS 

PLAN  OF  CANCUN  RUINS    .... 
PLAN  OF  FIRST  GROUP  OF  RUINS,  COZUMEL 
PLAN  OF  SECOND  GROUP  OF  RUINS,  COZUMEL 
GROUND  PLAN  OF  PALACE,  PALENQUE  . 
MAP  OF  YUCATAN 


on  page   151 

„  ,.  179 
„  „  181 
..  ..    215 

facing  page  386 


THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

CHAPTER    I 

A   bird's-eye   view   of  MEXICO 

MOST  of  us  want  to  do  what  we  are  not  doing.  In  the 
majority  of  human  hearts,  deep  down,  is  an  intangible 
tormenting  wish  to  go  somewhere,  to  see  some  land,  to  do 
something  which  is  not  in  the  programme  drawn  up  for  us 
by  the  inexorable  fate  of  birth  and  circumstance.  Usually 
the  longing  is  crushed  out  by  the  juggernaut  wheels  of  life's 
ponderous  Car  of  Necessity,  which  drives  us  all  forward  towards 
the  Unknown  in  a  set  groove  from  which  the  most  desperate 
efforts  never  extricate  us.  We  long  for  the  North  Pole,  we 
sigh  for  a  trip  to  the  Antarctic  regions,  we  dream  of  scaling 
the  Mountains  of  the  Moon,  with  the  unreasoning  longing 
of  children.  We  feel  we  shan't  be  happy  till  we  get  there, 
and  ...  we  are  never  happy.  We  go  on  longing  and  .  .  . 
hving  in  Brixton.  Most  of  us  have  not  left  Brixton  ;  most 
of  us  never  will. 

We — the  authors  of  this  book — were  not  Uving  in  Brixton, 
but  in  quite  as  commonplace  a  suburb  when  the  torments 
of  unfulfilled  aspiration  seized  us  and  shook  us,  as  a  terrier 
might  a  rat.  The  demon  of  discontent  shouted  at  us,  grinned 
at  us,  sneered  at  us.  "  You  hate  this  suburb  :  clear  out,  go 
away!"  it  said.  "Throw  up  your  work  and  duty.  Burst 
through  the  fetters  of  the  commonplace !  "  Well,  we  couldn't 
stand  it.  We  bore  it  for  some  weeks,  and  then  "  one 
midnight  in  the  silence  of  the  sleeptime  "  we  knocked  the 
ashes  out  of  our  pipes,  as  we  sat  mournfully  facing  each 
other  over  our  suburban  hearth,  and  from  the  fullness  of 
our  tormented  hearts  we  cried  aloud,  "  We  will  go  to 
Yucatan ! " 


2  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

But  our  "  leaving  Brixton  "  was  not  suspicious  enough 
in  its  suddenness  to  alarm  the  tradesmen.  Yucatan,  that 
curiously  imknown  peninsula,  easternmost  portion  of  the 
RepubUc  of  Mexico,  which  by  reason  of  its  wondrous  ruined 
cities  has  earned  the  title  of  "  the  Egypt  of  the  New  World," 
had  long  been  a  dream  of  ours.  We  had  put  in  years  of 
study  of  the  very  few  and  scarce  books  describing  some  of 
those  ruins,  and  hard  work  on  the  literature  of  the  problems 
of  Central  American  civilisation,  before  we  had  the  satisfaction 
of  "  leaving  Brixton," 

But  everything  comes  to  him  who  knows  how  to  wait, 
and  at  last,  in  pursuance  of  our  resolution  to  shake  the  dust 
of  the  commonplace  off  our  feet,  for  a  time  at  least,  we  found 
ourselves  on  a  very  dingy  November  afternoon  with  two 
unwieldy  packing-cases  full  of  gims  and  saddlery,  and  in- 
numerable portmanteaux,  standing  on  the  Prince's  Landing- 
stage,  Liverpool,  staring  out  seaward  into  the  dank  mist 
where  an  old  salt  declared  our  liner  to  lie.  It  was  obvious 
he  did  not,  for  in  a  few  minutes  a  dropsical  tug — it  was  almost 
as  broad  as  it  was  long — fumed  up  to  the  pierside  and,  hoisting 
the  company's  flag,  invited  us  to  go  with  it  trustingly  into 
that  mist  from  which  we  were  destined  to  pass — though 
that  looked  an  impossibility — into  the  dazzling  glories  of 
the  Eternal  Carib  summer.  Having  posted  our  last  wills 
and  testaments  and  dying  wishes  to  our  friends  in  seventeen 
envelopes,  and  given  one  more  pathetic  glance  at  the  sombre 
grey  glories  of  the  Liverpudlian  capital  which  stood  out 
drear  and  grim  behind  us  in  the  fading  light,  we  surrendered 
to  the  captain  of  the  tug,  in  company  with  other  apprehensive- 
looking  voyagers. 

If  you  have  never  taken  a  long  sea-voyage,  and  the 
etceteras  and  discomforts  of  many  months'  travel  in  a  land 
(the  language  of  whose  inhabitants  you  have  been  for  weeks 
trying  to  grapple  with  in  unintelUgible  grammars)  loom 
awesome  in  your  mind,  there  is  something  positively  terrifying 
in  standing  on  the  deck  of  a  tender  (as  all  well-conducted 
liner-tugs  insist  on  being  called)  on  a  damp,  dark  autumn 
afternoon.  Its  grimy  decks  and  its  reek  of  oil  offend  you. 
Its  chilly  bareness,  its  inhospitable,  straight-backed  wooden 
seats,  the  gaunt  nakedness  of  its  wallowing  outhne,  conjure 
up  to  your  overwrought  mind  vague  comparisons  with  the 
bare,  whitewashed  execution-shed  of  which  you  have  read  in 
the  Yellow  Press.     You  feel  you  are  in  a  Nautical  Execution- 


A    BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW   OF    MEXICO  3 

shed.  You  stand  there  shivering.  You  look  back  at  the 
fast  fading  friendly  wooden  joists  of  the  landing-stage.  You 
wish  you  had  never  come.  You  feel  as  you  do  when  you 
get  into  the  dentist's  room,  having  earUer  in  the  day  tele- 
graphed to  him  that  you  must  have  the  offending  tooth  out 
with  gas.  You  see  the  deadly  chair  and  the  cylinder  of 
nitrous  oxide  and  you  feel  that  perhaps  after  all  you  could 
have  borne  the  toothache.  Supposing  (you  shudder  at  the 
thought)  something  went  wrong  and  you  never,  never  woke 
up.  "  There  !  Now  please  open  your  mouth  wide  and  breathe 
deeply."  Oh  no !  Beg  pardon  !  "  Mind  your  toes  there, 
sir,  please,"  from  an  energetic  officer  in  gold-laced  coat,  as 
the  gangway  flashes  out  from  the  steamship's  black  side  like 
a  snake's  tongue.  A  grinding,  squeaking  noise  as  the  drop- 
sical tug  affectionately  rubs  itself  against  the  fenders  which 
hang  on  the  liner's  side — a  mad,  foaming  maelstrom  of  grey 
sea-water,  whitened  as  the  screw  reverses — a  Babel  of  orders 
and  counter-orders,  and — you  are  swallowed  up  into  the 
floating  town  ;  you  are  on  board.  You  look  wildly  round  : 
nothing  will  save  you  now.  The  grim  pilot  in  beaver  cap 
stands  on  the  bridge,  significant  official,  to  see  that  no  hitch 
occurs  in  the  execution  ;  the  steam  whistle  sounds  mournful 
through  the  mist  fast  settling  into  fog  ;  the  great  engines, 
which  are  to  work  unceasingly  for  seventeen  days  and  nights, 
"break  out  into  a  long  moaning,  groaning,  thumping,  as  they 
start  upon  their  Sisyphean  task,  and  .  .  .  you  are  off. 

Nothing  is  ever  as  one  expects  it.  We  expected  the  Atlantic 
to  be  at  least  riotously  playful  in  November.  We  expected 
our  boat  (she  was  only  4,000  tons)  to  be  tossed,  as  you  flip 
an  empty  nutshell,  by  one  great  bullying  roller  to  another, 
in  their  titanic  play.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  We  steamed  down 
the  Mersey,  out  into  the  Irish  Channel,  and  though  the 
good  ship  Floridian  rolled  (Jerusalem !  we  had  to  keep  our 
«yes  on  the  children,  for  the  deck  was  at  45°  nearly  all  day  : 
it  was  "  All  hands  to  the  kids  !  "  to  stop  them  slipping  over- 
board), we  eat  and  we  drank  and  the  chill  air  off  the  Irish 
coast  became  balmy,  and  the  mists  broke  and  we  raised  our 
caps  to  My  Lord  the  Sun,  whom  we  had  not  seen  since  the 
summer  ;  and,  before  we  knew  where  we  were,  deck-chairs 
were  out  and  overcoats  were  off,  and  officers  in  white-drill 
imiforms  paced  a  bridge  shaded  by  snowy  awnings,  and 
we  leaned  back  and  smoked  dreamily  in  the  sunshine  and 
rejoiced  that  we  had  "  left  Brixton." 


4  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Some  nineteen  days  later  we  had  just  serenely  entered 
on  the  second  course  of  our  admirable  daily  breakfast  when 
a  friendly  officer's  face  appeared  at  the  companion  and  uttered 
the  monosyllable  "  land."  It's  a  stupid-enough-looking  word 
when  it  gets  itself  written,  but  it  can  mean  a  lot  when  for 
nearly  three  weeks  you  have  not  seen  anything  of  it  worth 
talking  about.  We  had  become  such  sea-dogs ;  we  had 
grown  so  used  to  our  daily  prospect  of  dancing  blue  wavelets, 
of  the  sunbathed  infinite  waters,  darkling  from  sapphire  to 
slaty  grey  at  the  horizon — our  horizon  ;  we  had  sat  so  many 
nights  contented  under  the  awnings  in  the  moonlight,  the 
exquisite  tropic  calm  of  the  sea-night  broken  only  by  the 
periodic  music  of  the  ship's  bell  with  its  haunting  recitative 
"  All's  well !  "  from  the  look-out  man  ;  lulled  by  the  magic 
of  the  eternal  Carib  summer,  we  had  all  so  learnt  in  this  rare 
fortnight  the  wisdom  of  the  lotus-eaters,  eating  the  honey- 
sweet  fruit  of  the  tropic  with  never  one  wish  to  go  homeward, 
that  it  came  as  something  approaching  a  shock  to  us,  that 
word  "  land."  Why,  we  thought  it  was  as  extinct  as  the 
dodo !  Time  and  space  seemed  to  have  melted  for  us  into 
a  world  of  infinite  blues  and  golds  and  whites,  a  world  peopled 
by  merry  porpoises,  by  silver-bright  flying-fish,  and  snowy 
sea-birds.  Knives  and  forks  clattered  down  on  to  plates 
and  an  eager  throng  of  those  "  whose  island  home  was  far 
beyond  the  seas  "  dashed  for  the  companion  stairs.  We 
rushed  on  deck  with  something  of  the  eagerness  the  great 
Christopher  must  have  felt  as  he  hurried  to  his  galleon-poop 
when  the  Spanish  sailors  saw  from  the  mast-head,  as  in  a 
glass  dimly,  what  they  took  to  be  the  coast  of  a  New  World. 

There  was  not  much  to  see.  But  stay  !  What  is  that 
which  floats,  magically  suspended,  cloudlike,  before  the 
glass  ?  You  rub  your  eyes  :  you  dust  the  glass  :  you  look 
again.  Yes  !  right  up  in  the  sky  there,  as  far  above  the 
dark  fine  of  shore  as  the  puffy  white  cloud-spots  which 
dot  the  boundless  azure,  is  a  triangle  of  rose-tinted  white  ; 
and  as  you  stare  the  wonder  of  it  all  grips  you.  You  see  the 
sun  glinting  dazzlingly  on  its  eternal  snows  ;  you  see  the 
great  rents  and  crevasses  seaming  its  sides  ;  you  see  where 
the  cloud-bank  blots  out  and  shrouds  its  vast  shoulders  and 
flanks.  It  is  Orizaba,  mighty  Orizaba,  raising  its  majestic 
head  four  miles  into  the  infinite  blue. 

In  the  enthusiasm  of  the  moment  we  all  agreed,  even 
those  of  us  who  had  suffered  from  the  voyage  (and  they  were 


A   BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW   OF   MEXICO  5 

few)  that  it  was  worth  coming  six  thousand  miles  to  see  such 
a  sight ;  and  we  were  all  the  better  pleased  with  ourselves  and 
our  luck  because  our  good  skipper,  who  had  sailed  to  Vera 
Cruz  off  and  on  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  declared  it  was 
only  once  in  ten  times  that  the  great  volcano  condescended 
to  expose  its  marvellous  beauties  so  well. 

Vera  Cruz  is  a  town  in  travail.  Its  labour  pains  have 
seized  it.  Accoucheur  Sir  Weetman  Pearson  at  the  bedside 
is  assisting  at  the  delivery  of  a  marinopolis — a  City  of  the 
Sea.  Majestic  buildings  are  breaking  out  amid  squalid 
Spanish  stuccoed  houses,  with  frowsy  passage-ways  and 
garbage-strewn  courtyards,  dating  from  Maximilian's  day 
and  earlier.  Quays  and  wharves,  lighthouses  and  customs 
offices,  plazas  and  docks,  broad  asphalted  roadways  and 
stone  houses,  are  rearing  themselves  where  once,  ere  Sir 
Weetman's  stalwart  nawy-elves  did  their  fairy  work,  were 
naught  but  pestilential  marshes,  spawning-ground  for  the 
*'  Yellow  Jack  "  mosquito,  tiny  fever  scourge-bearer  to  the 
panic-stricken  inhabitants.  As  we  steamed  inside  the  great 
stone  breakwater  built  of  cyclopean  masonry.  Vera  Cruz's 
first  line  of  defence  from  the  inroads  of  the  deep,  the  impres- 
sion one  gets  is  that  of  the  incongruity  of  it  all.  The  new 
Customs  House  and  Oficina  de  Correos  (Post  Office),  palatial 
piles,  stand  out  seaward  on  the  plain,  far  away  from  the 
green-shuttered,  down-at-heel,  ramshackle  hovel-town,  as  if 
ashamed  of  it  all.  What  you  do  feel  is  that  when  the  confine- 
ment is  satisfactorily  completed.  Vera  Cruz  will  be  a  great  city. 
To-day  she  is  still  building-enterprise  plus  a  plaza.  Every 
Spanish-American  town  is  a  town  with  a  plaza  :  Vera  Cruz 
is  a  plaza  with  a  town.  We  will  get  there  in  a  minute,  but 
meantime  there  are  ropes  being  thrown  from  our  liner  to 
the  quaint  yeUow-faced  Mexicans  on  the  quay  ;  the  indicator- 
bell  rings  from  the  bridge,  the  needle  flies  round  to  the  magic 
word  "  Stop,"  and  the  huge  steel  muscles  of  the  great  panting, 
tired  engines  are  at  rest  at  last.  It  is  a  glorious  day.  The 
coast  mists  have  melted  away,  and  the  whites  of  the  distant 
houses,  the  dark  greens  of  the  palm  trees,  the  flags  of  all 
nations  fluttering  on  the  shipping,  make  a  vivid  contrast 
in  the  blaze  of  sun  with  their  distant  background  of  lofty 
sand-dunes  rolling  westward  in  a  horizon  of  glistening  white 
towards  Mexico  City. 

The  quay  at  Vera  Cruz  is  a  kaleidoscope  of  international 
trade-life  :   a  spectacle  unexampled  in  its  way.     Great  steam- 


6  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

ships — their  hatches  burst  open — continuously  belch  out 
their  many  cargoes  upon  the  wooden  piers.  The  clouds  of 
dust,  the  reeking  smell  of  toiling  men,  the  screaming  of  the 
steam  whistles,  the  grinding  and  creaking  of  the  winches,  the 
cries  of  the  workers,  the  short,  sharp  words  of  command, 
the  hoarse  shouts  in  a  score  of  languages,  and  the  jangling 
crash  of  iron  rails  or  girders  or  iron  sheeting  as  each  fresh 
load  breaks  from  the  winch  on  to  the  heaped-up  mass  below, 
make  up  a  veritable  trade-hell.  Niggers  from  Jamaica  and 
the  States,  the  purple  veins  standing  out  like  weals  upon 
their  foreheads,  strain  and  grunt  under  huge  bales  ;  Koreans, 
red-tinted,  flat-faced  ;  Chinamen,  their  blue  wide  trousers 
tucked  up  to  their  knees  ;  Spaniards  and  Mexicans  ;  Italians 
and  Greeks  ;  the  dapper  Japs,  their  lithe  bodies  and  small 
faces  contrasting  with  Viking  workmen  from  Sweden  and 
Norway  ;  Creole  lads  with  raven-hued  curly  hair  and  sun- 
kissed  faces,  their  black  velvet  eyes  alight  with  the  lust  of 
the  south  ;  high-cheekboned,  smooth-chinned  Aztec  Indians, 
ragged-garbed  ;  sailors  of  all  races,  blue-bloused,  guemseyed, 
naked-chested,  cheeks  and  necks  that  golden  bronze  for 
which  wind  and  sea  are  the  only  cosmetics,  jostle  and  push, 
laugh  and  curse,  sweat  and  pant  in  their  effort  to  live. 

Nowhere  can  one  see  the  inwardness  of  the  harsh  struggle 
for  life  better  than  on  Vera  Cruz  quay.  Derelicts,  wastrels, 
beachcombers,  sinners  and  sinned  against,  bloodshot-eyed 
drunkards  and  leaden-grey  opium  smokers  and  eaters,  strong 
and  weak,  healthful  and  sickly,  men  with  faces  of  vicious 
angels,  men  with  faces  of  devils  let  loose  from  Hell,  they 
have  come  from  the  uttermost  comers  of  the  earth,  these 
groaning,  sweating,  reeking  human  beings,  to  fight  in  blister- 
ing sun  and  pestilential  dust  for  the  right  to  live.  Long, 
ordered  lines  of  porters  wheel  their  laden  trucks  to  the  bonding 
sheds  ;  long  lines  of  porters  wheel  their  empty  trucks,  like 
passing  trains,  back  to  the  gaping  hatches  of  the  giant  ships. 
Under  great  umbrellas  of  scarlet,  yellow  or  green  cottons, 
jutting  up  like  gigantic  vari-coloured  toadstools,  sit  portly 
Mexican  dames,  coarse  of  face,  ponderous  in  bosoms  and 
stomachs,  the  trestle-trays  at  their  sides  loaded  with  fulsome 
heaps  of  fly-marked  fruits,  with  sickly  terrors  of  sugar  and 
pastry  (euphemistically  known  as  pan  duke,  "  sweet  bread  "), 
and  sweetmeats  of  such  unholy  colours  that  they  look  as  if 
they  had  been  dipped  in  the  devil's  own  dye-pot. 


A   BIRD'S-EYE   VIEW    OF   MEXICO  7 

There  are  no  cabs  in  Vera  Cruz.  If  there  were  it  would 
make  no  real  difference  to  the  unhappy  traveller,  for  there 
is  no  roadway  to  the  quays'  sides,  and  baggage  is  shouldered 
by  one  of  the  innumerable  rascally-faced  Mexican  touts  or 
trundled  in  huge  railway  barrows  down  the  piers  and  jolted 
over  execrable  roads  towards  the  bam-like  structure  which 
does  duty  as  terminus  for  the  Central  Mexican  Railroad,  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  lines  ever  laid.  A  few  hours  in  Vera 
Cruz  is  enough  to  set  the  weary  Briton  humming  perpetually 
the  air  of  "  Pay,  pay,  pay."  Everything  in  Mexico  is  a  ques- 
tion of  money,  and  everybody  has  his  or  her  price.  It  is  often 
a  large  one,  and  a  trade  union  of  robbers  has  decreed  that  you 
must  pay  a  dollar  (two  shillings)  a  package  to  have  your 
baggage  conveyed  from  quay  to  station,  a  distance  of  a  quarter 
of  a  mile.  It  does  not  matter  how  many  or  how  few  are  your 
impedimenta,  nor  the  size  of  the  package.  The  smallest  must 
be  paid  for  at  the  same  rate,  though  in  the  reverse  case  you 
do  not  score  ;  for  a  very  large  package  is  charged  for  at 
double  rates.  Unless  you  are  content  to  drag  portmanteaux 
through  the  mob,  you  must  '  foot '  this  first  outrageous  bill. 
A  fellow-passenger  of  ours  travelling  quietly  with  his  wife 
paid  twenty-four  shillings  for  the  transporting  of  his  kit. 

The  Customs  House  officials  are  fair-minded  enough,  and 
there  is  httle  trouble  for  the  stranger  there.  Everything 
obviously  for  personal  use  is  "  passed  "  ungrudgingly  with 
the  single  exception  of  silver  plate  or  ornaments.  Our  only 
difficulty  lay  in  explaining  in  execrable  Spanish  to  Seiior  el 
Aduanero  (Mr.  the  Custom  House  Officer)  that  with  a  long 
tour  in  primeval  forests  and  cruises  amid  archipelagos  of  islets 
before  us,  20  lb.  weight  of  Cadbury's  solid  chocolate  and  two 
dozen  tins  of  their  cocoa  essence  were  moderate  estimates 
of  our  personal  needs  in  the  direction  of  this  best  of  all  nutri- 
ment. He  scented  trade  ;  and  it  was  some  minutes  before 
we  prevailed  upon  him  to  take  his  eagle  eye  off  the  suspici- 
ously ghstening  tins  which  meant  such  comfort  for  us  in 
our  wanderings.  Mournfully  learning  that  our  luggage  would 
cost  us  sixteen  shillings  to  move  into  safety  till  we  sailed  again 
for  Yucatan,  we  entrusted  it  to  an  apparently  honest  Railway 
Agent  with  some  misgivings.  Never  let  your  baggage  out 
of  your  sight  at  Vera  Cruz.  The  contents  are  often  stolen 
in  the  very  Customs  House.  The  luggage  porters  inter- 
change their  metal  badges,  too,  so  that  while  No.  29  takes 
your  bag  and  swears  to  meet  you  at  Che  station,  if  you  ever 


8  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

have  the  luck  to  see  that  number  again,  you  will  honestly 
be  obliged  to  admit  to  the  police  authorities  that  the  wearer 
is  not  the  same  fellow  whom  you  employed  and  .  .  .  well, 
— the  matter  rests  there  and  your  stolen  bag  in  Vera  Cruz. 

But  here's  the  plaza,  and  your  first  glimpse  of  Mexican 
life.  It  is  dusty  and  frowsy  enough — this  stone-paved  square 
with  its  tawdry  green  and  yellow-painted  houses,  its  ill-laid 
roads  broken  by  crevasses  and  large  holes  under  the  flimsy 
tram  lines  where  cobble  stones  have  got  displaced ;  but  there 
is  just  touch  enough  of  the  tropics  to  make  it  fascinating. 
At  its  centre  is  a  two-storeyed  kiosk — bandstand  above,  drink- 
ing-booth  below.  Under  the  deep  shade  of  giant  laurels,  ever- 
green oaks,  tulip  trees,  palms  and  orange  trees,  stands  an 
inner  ring  of  chairs  and  round  tables  ;  the  outer  circle  is  formed 
of  iron  garden-seats  backing  on  to  the  flower-beds,  rich  with 
scarlet-blossomed  poinsettia,  twenty  or  thirty  feet  high,  with 
yellow  and  purple  bell-flower  blooms,  with  scarlet  tulipans 
and  a  pale  pink  and  white  blossom  of  a  jasmine-like  shape  and 
size.  Overhead  in  the  thick  leaves  myriads  of  piches — bright- 
eyed,  sleek-feathered  cousins  of  the  English  blackbird — chatter, 
chatter,  chatter  till  you  wonder  if  they  wall  ever  stop  :  the 
Veracruzian  tells  you  they  never  do.  On  three  sides  of  the 
plaza  the  houses  are  arcaded ;  on  the  fourth  is  a  hideously 
meretricious  pile  of  yellowish  stone — the  cathedral. 

It  is  but  10  a.m.,  yet  the  sun  is  so  fierce  that  the  arcades 
are  curtained  off  with  sunblinds  reaching  to  the  pavement 
edge.  Within  these  tunnels  of  stifling  shade.  Vera  Cruz  break- 
fasts at  ten  and  dines  at  five,  and  drinks  all  day.  Tables 
for  two,  tables  for  four  or  more,  tables  of  metal  or  of  wood, 
stained  with  ringed  stains  of  wineglass  or  coffee-cup  are  ranged 
up  by  the  blinds,  leaving  a  passage  for  strollers.  All  day, 
almost  all  night  at  these  tables  sit  men — men  of  all  conditions. 
It  is  the  kaleidoscope  of  the  quays,  a  shade  higher  and  .  .  . 
lower.  For  the  filthy,  sweating  nigger  at  the  hatch-side  catches 
something — however  little — of  the  majesty  of  toil.  But 
these  men,  they  neither  toil  nor  spin.  They  have  come  in 
from  plantations  where  they  are  almost  kings,  and  they  hold 
their  glasses  in  fever-yellowed  hands,  and  leer  at  the  passing 
women  and  girls,  whose  coarse  beauty  shrouded  in  mantilla, 
whose  plump  powdered  necks,  and  bosoms  heaving  opulent 
under  tawdry  muslin  frocks  seem  fitting  part,  the  female 
complement  to  the  drink-sodden  scene.  But  stay  !  there  is 
a  pleasanter  sight,  at  that  table    over  there.     It's  worth  a 


A    BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW   OF   MEXICO  9 

glance — you  are  glad  to  look  away  from  the  wolfish-eyed 
victims  of  drink  and  debauchery  at  those  two  hearty  English 
skippers,  tanned  and  bearded,  who  take  their  liquor  like  men, 
and  talk  of  their  just  completed  "  runs."  They  are  in  the 
place  but  not  of  it,  and  somehow  you  think  you  catch  an 
envious  glance  thrown  their  way  by  the  gaunt,  blear-eyed 
creature  who  crawls  past  them  after  his  fifth  cocktail. 

In  the  streets  the  picturesque  Mexican  life  is  a-doing.  The 
ranchero — so  tight  of  trouser  that  it  looks  as  if  his  legs  must 
have  been  melted  and  run  in  hot  into  those  grey  pantaloons, 
like  bullets  in  a  mould — silver-spurred,  his  huge  Mother- 
Shipton-shaped  felt  hat  embroidered  and  boimd  with  silver 
laces,  his  feet  hidden  in  the  great  leather  pockets  which  serve 
as  stirrups  here,  canters  into  the  plaza  on  a  white  Arab.  Round 
the  comer  comes  the  milkman  on  a  mule,  his  four  jars  of  milk 
bulking  so  large  round  his  saddle  that  you  wonder  he  can 
get  on  or  off.  The  raucous  shouts  of  the  Indians  as  their 
waggons  jolt  and  bump  and  rattle  over  the  broken  cobbles  :  the 
"  Mula-tniila  /"  of  the  Mexican  as  he  urges  on  the  mules  which 
draw  the  yellow  varnished  tramcars  down  the  rickety  lines  : 
the  cracked  treble  note  of  the  old  woman  who  thrusts  her 
roll  of  lottery  tickets  into  your  face  with  the  eternal  "  Por 
manana,"  and  the  loud  insistent  cry  of  the  brown-faced,  bare- 
foot, rascally-handsome  newsboys,  mingle  into  one  inharmonious 
chorus.  On  the  shady  seats  of  the  plaza  loll  the  ever-tired 
Mexican  workmen,  smoking  cigarettes.  Twelve  strikes,  and 
the  troop  of  rurales  in  grey  uniforms,  with  carbines  and  heavy 
revolvers — the  mounted  pohce — ride  out  from  their  barracks 
to  take  their  work  of  patrolling  the  town.  The  townspeople 
gather  and  look,  and  then  they  sleep  again  ;  while  in  their 
shirt-sleeves,  cigar  or  cigarette  between  their  lips,  Mexican 
clerks  balance  ledgers  in  banks  and  merchants'  offices  behind 
lattice  bUnds,  and  a  postmaster  in  white-drill  trousers  and 
coloured  silk  vest  sells  you  postage  stamps  between  puffs  of 
smoke. 

The  last  few  years  have  made  a  world  of  difference  to  Vera 
Cruz.  A  decade  back  for  three-quarters  of  the  year  it  was 
plague-ridden.  In  the  dusty  street-arteries,  up  and  down 
which  its  vicious,  frowsy  Ufe  is  pumped  forwards  and  back- 
wards to  its  plaza-heart,  you  might  have  walked  and  scarcely 
foimd  one  doorway  without  the  great  splashed  crimson  cross 
— seal  of  the  yellow-fever  fiend  within.  To-day  it  is  growing 
into  a  health-resort,  but  even  now  sanitation  is  embryonic. 


10  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Dustcarts,  gruesome  guillotine-like  tumbrils,  parade  the 
streets  ;  and  "  gilded  pools  a  steed  would  sniff  at  "  make 
road-crossings  into  fording-places  where  you  must  leap  from 
one  broken  cobble  to  another  and  stumble  into  chasms  of 
earth  and  unsightly  ruts.  But  the  gods  have  been  good  to 
this  evil  little  town.  For  there  are  armies  of  unpaid  scavengers 
who  parade  the  streets,  doing  their  work  so  silently  and  so 
perfectly  that  the  municipality  has  passed  a  law  by  which 
an  injury  to  one  of  them  is  a  special  crime  and  misdemeanour, 
heavily  fined.  These  are  the  zopilotes,  as  the  Mexicans  call 
the  American  turkey-buzzards, — to  kill  one  of  which  costs 
the  murderer  at  least  five  dollars.  Cadet  branch  of  the  vulture 
family,  in  their  skinny  bald  heads,  their  rusty  black  moth- 
eaten  feathers,  their  great  splotchy  claw-feet,  their  torn  and 
ragged  wings  hanging  loose  and  low,  Nature  has  given  them 
just  the  dress  becoming  such  birds  of  hell.  No  !  you  did 
not  believe  birds  could  be  so  ugly,  birds  could  have  such  hate- 
ful eyes,  such  splay  feet,  such  blotchy  beaks.  They  are  every- 
where :  they  perch  on  the  cathedral  towers,  on  the  balconies 
of  houses  :  they  ride  on  the  dustcarts,  fight  for  the  unspeak- 
able in  the  gutters,  tear  at  the  rotting  fish-head  and  settle 
in  scores  round  the  carcase  of  a  dog.  A  score  of  them  amble 
in  front  of  you  on  the  pavement,  and  hop  their  ungainly, 
hideous  sideways  hops  as  you  spurn  them,  veritable  birds 
of  Beelzebub,  Lord  of  Flies. 

But  Vera  Cruz  has  good  reason  to  thank  heaven  for  her 
flying  dustbins,  and  as  they  peer  sideways  at  you  out  of  their 
blinking  rheumous  eyes  they  seem  to  know  it.  "  We  don't 
fear  you,  passer,"  you  could  imagine  them  saying  (though 
one  of  the  uncanniest  facts  about  these  awful  birds  is  that 
they  have  no  cry  :  they  are  as  silent  as  the  dead  they  filch 
and  feast  on),  "we  are  an  essential  part  of  this  earth-hell: 
we  are  the  Devil's  bailiffs."  You  see  the  birds  in  other 
Mexican  towns  and  cities  :  you  see  them  in  Yucatan  perched 
on  the  walls  of  haciendas  or  in  the  woods  wrenching  at  the 
hide  of  a  rotting  cow,  but  they  never  seem  to  personify  evil 
as  at  Vera  Cruz.  And  there  is  evil  there  !  There  is  vice  in 
the  air.  Round  the  town  clings  an  indescribable  haunting 
sense  of  sin — sin  which  is  swinish  and  foul — not  the  dazzling 
vice  of  a  Semiramis  Court,  the  glorified  debaucheries  of  a 
Capri,  but  a  dreary,  drink-sodden,  fetid  sin,  clinging  to  the 
town  like  the  noisome  smell  of  a  charnel-house.  Not  that 
you. -see  it.     "  There  ain't  no  Ten  Commandments  "  at  Vera 


A    BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW    OF    MEXICO  ii 

Cruz  ;  but  you  don't  see  them  broken  :  you  simply  feel  they 
don't  exist.  Outward  decorum  here,  as  in  most  Mexican 
towns,  is  a  feature.  Street  women  are  banished  to  a  special 
quarter,  and  the  shops  are  cleanly  compared  with  some  of 
Paris  in  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  or  the  Boulevard  de  Montmartre. 
But  the  women  and  men,  the  girls  and  the  boys,  have  such 
faces  and  eyes  that  you  feel  that  anything,  everything,  is 
possible.  Perhaps  we  do  "  the  New  City  of  the  True  Cross  " 
injustice.  All  trade-centres  where  the  foreign  sailor  comes 
are  much  of  a  muchness.  We  simply  record  our  impressions. 
"  Perad venture  there  be  seven  good  men  in  Vera  Cruz." 
There  are  probably  many  score  more,  but  one  cannot  help 
wishing  the  streets  did  not  smell  so  rancid. 

Time  was  so  much  the  essence  of  our  tour  that  we  decided 
to  travel  by  the  night  train  to  Moctezuma's  capital — where 
our  chief  business  was  the  procuring  of  passports — despite 
the  lamentations  of  acquaintances  who  assured  us  we  were 
throwing  away  the  opportunity  of  a  lifetime — the  sight  of  the 
train's  climb  of  8,000  feet  in  the  sunlight.  As  it  proved,  we 
had  perhaps  in  some  ways  a  really  more  awe-inspiring  night 
spectacle  ;  for  the  moon,  which  had  bathed  the  tropic  seas 
night  after  night  for  us  in  such  gorgeous  silver,  had  but  just 
passed  its  full  the  very  day  of  our  arrival  in  port. 

When  the  tepid  night  settled  down  upon  the  plaza,  we 
made  a  hurried  meal  and,  leaving  the  crowd  still  drinking, 
made  our  way  to  the  station.  There  are  two  trains  every 
twenty-four  hours  each  way  between  Mexico  City  and  Vera 
Cruz,  and  a  few  minutes  after  we  reached  the  platform  the 
day  train  from  the  capital  came  lumbering  in,  the  bell  on  its 
huge  Atlantic  type  of  engine  ringing  mournfully.  The  same 
train  starts  back  within  a  few  minutes — the  engines  only 
being  changed — and  the  narrow  platform  was  quite  the  wrong 
place  for  the  dreamer  during  the  next  few  moments,  with  the 
crowds  clambering  out  of  the  huge  corridor  cars  and  a  mob 
of  would-be  passengers  fighting  to  get  in.  In  the  mSlee  one 
of  us  slipped  between  the  train  and  the  platform,  while  the 
train  was  still  slowly  moving,  but  was  withdrawn  by  a  friendly 
arm  before  the  oncoming  bogey-wheel  had  passed  over  his 
foot  and  put  a  summary  end  to  explorations  in  Yucatan. 

Railway  fares  in  Mexico  are  cheap,  and  the  carriages  are 
nasty.  Seats  of  green  leather  with  metal  arm-rests  (inven- 
tion of  railway-devil,  surely)  are  ranged,  like  the  seats  on  a 
bus-top,  each  side  of  the  car  with  an  avenue  down  the  centre. 


12  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

A  Pullman  sleeping  and  breakfast  compartment  always  form 
part  of  the  night  trains.  Otherwise  there  are  firsts,  seconds, 
and  thirds,  the  latter  wooden-benched  contrivances,  designed 
apparently  with  the  set  purpose  of  getting  into  the  cubic  space 
available  the  wherewithal  for  as  much  potential  human  dis- 
comfort as  possible.  Into  these  cars  the  Mexicans  and  Indians 
are  climbing,  a  river  of  strange  colour — blankets  of  all  shades 
and  stripes,  straw  steeple  hats  of  every  make  for  the  men, 
the  womenfolk  bareheaded  always — baskets  of  fruit  and 
breads,  bottles  of  drink,  and  queer  knotted  handkerchief- 
luggage  reminiscent — without  their  cleanliness,  though — of 
those  blue  and  black  silk  handkerchiefs  in  which  "  Jack  " 
brings  along  his  spare  jumper  and  flannel  shirt  when  he  "  comes 
home  again."  For  us  in  our  lordly  "  first  " — its  floors  stained 
with  a  myriad  expectorations,  its  cushions  bumpy  and  spring- 
less — there  is  gathering  a  motley  gang  of  Mexico's  upper  ten, 
among  whom  the  diabolical  bowler  hat  and  those  impossible 
tweeds,  which  the  foreigner,  imitating  our  fashions,  raises 
God  knows  where,  predominate  over  the  Mexican  dress.  A 
minute  before  we  start  our  most  interesting  fellow-passenger 
arrives — a  young  man — his  straw  steeple  hat  set  rakishly  on 
one  side,  his  red-white-and-blue  blanket  thrown  round  him 
and  imder  one  ear — closely  followed  by  two  dark-garbed 
Mexicans.  He  is  a  prisoner,  of  whom  more  later,  and,  as  the 
whistle  sounds,  we  see  that  his  companions  are  engaged  in 
making  him  comfortable  for  the  night  by  mooring  him  with 
glistening  steel  handcuffs  to  the  metal  arm-rest  of  his  seat. 
We  steam  out  into  the  still  night  air,  the  heavy  train 
bumping  and  jolting  over  level-crossings  where  stand  groups 
of  Mexican  poor,  children,  and  dogs ;  past  rows  of  adobe 
huts,  palm-thatched,  and  frowsy  little  tiendas  (general  shops), 
where  glimpses  are  caught  in  the  oil-flare  of  trays  of  unspeak- 
able eatables.  It  is  stifling  in  the  carriages,  and  we  throw 
up  the  windows.  The  moon  is  rising,  the  night  air  is  warm 
and  scented — scented  with  a  strange  pungent,  spicy  scent — 
an  indescribable  perfume — the  smell  of  the  tropics.  The 
train  rolls  heavily  on  between  dark  masses  of  bush  and  stunted 
cactus,  topped  by  waving  palm-leaves,  and  here  and  there 
banana  plantations,  heavy  with  the  grass-green  fruit.  This  is 
the  tiena-caliente,  "  the  hot-lands,"  the  great  belt  of  steaming 
miasmic  country  stretching  some  fifty  miles  ere  we  begin 
the  climb  up  to  the  highlands  of  Central  Mexico.  It  is  hard 
to  see  much,  but  that  long  slope  of  undulating  ground  out 


A    BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW    OF    MEXICO  13 

there  to  the  left  is  a  coffee  plantation,  the  dark-green  bushes 
dotting  the  rounded  hillside  like  tufts  of  wool  on  a  Bushman's 
head.  Now  the  train  crawls,  as  a  fly  on  the  edge  of  a  teacup, 
round  a  fertile  crater-Hke  valley.  You  can  look  right  down 
into  its  green  glories,  where  mid  the  leaves  the  moonlight 
touches  into  quicksilver  the  boisterous  river  which  bubbles 
and  froths  like  a  Scotch  stream  in  spate.  Now  we  pass  through 
acres  of  forest  banking  up  each  side  so  high  that  it  is  all  black- 
ness ;  while  every  few  miles  the  mournful  tolling  of  the  engine 
beU  heralds  us  into  a  wayside  village,  the  lights  streaming 
through  the  doors  of  whitewashed  huts,  and  Indians,  muflfied 
to  their  eyes  in  blankets,  standing  in  silent  groups  by  the 
railside. 

At  Rio  Blanco  we  rattle  past  a  great  cotton  factory,  its 
myriad  lights  twinkling  into  such  a  confusion  of  illumination 
that  it  looks  like  a  swarm  of  fireflies  hovering  amid  the 
darkened  houses  and  huts  of  the  town.  For  hours  afterwards 
we  are  to  see  those  twinkling  lights,  thousands  of  feet  below 
us  in  the  valley,  ever  shifting  their  position  as  the  train  winds 
its  way  round  and  again  round  the  vast  wooded  sides  of  the 
mountain  range.  This  factory  at  Rio  Blanco  is  one  of  the 
largest  cotton  factories  in  Mexico,  and  during  a  recent  winter 
was  the  scene  of  one  of  those  terrible  "  incidents  "  which 
prove  how  really  superficial  is  the  civilisation  of  Mexico.  The 
Company  objected  to  their  workmen  buying  their  provisions 
at  the  ordinary  town  stores  and  started  a  tienda  of  their  own, 
where  the  goods  sold  were  both  more  expensive  and  of  inferior 
quality.  An  order  was  issued  that  in  future  the  "  hands  " 
must  deal  at  the  Company's  store.  The  men  objected  and 
went  on  strike.  From  the  capital  comes  down  General 
Martinez,  Vice-Secretary  for  War,  thenceforward  to  be  known 
as  "  the  Mexican  Trepoff,"  and  in  one  morning  his  troops  shoot 
down  in  cold  blood  214  men  loitering  in  the  streets  of  Rio 
Blanco.  Enough  that  the  "  Iron  Master  "  ordered  it.  No 
one  disputes  the  yea  or  the  nay  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  maker  of 
Modem  Mexico.  So  the  strike  is  over  :  labour  is  scarce  in 
Rio  Blanco  for  a  week  or  so  ;  and  Trepoff- Martinez  travels 
back  to  the  capital  to  ride  his  fine  Arab  in  Chapultepec  Park 
and  spend  his  evenings  at  cards  in  the  Jockey  Club. 

But  for  the  time  we  lose  sight  of  the  factory.  We  are 
nearing  the  hmits  of  the  hot-lands,  and  as  you  stare  out  into 
the  night,  barrener  hills  and  mounds,  stone-speckled,  are 
closing  in  on  each  side.     Beyond  them  and  above  them,  blacker 


14  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

distant  masses  climb  into  the  moonlit  sky,  ringing  round  the 
landscape  ahead  till  it  looks  as  if  our  train,  landlocked,  will 
soon  have  to  come  to  a  standstill.  The  plains,  rich  with  their 
harvests  of  cotton  and  coffee,  of  fruits,  sugar-cane  and  olives, 
have  given  place  all  round  to  mountains  ;  and  as  we  wind 
forward,  heights,  rising  mysterious,  magical,  wall  us  in  from 
the  rear  till  we  seem  as  if  we  were  caught  in  a  black  devil's- 
punch-bowl.  And  then,  like  the  fitting  knell  to  the  appre- 
hensive traveller's  thoughts,  the  doleful  engine  bell  clangs 
sorrowfully  backwards  and  forwards,  and  the  great  train  rolls 
into  the  station  of  Orizaba.  Here  in  a  bare  stone-floored 
barn-room  a  grossly  obese  Mexican  (like  the  camel,  he  seems 
to  have  two  or  three  stomachs,  his  striped  leather-belted  cotton 
vest  shows  such  huge  undulations  of  adipose  tissue),  assisted 
by  a  sickly  yellow  Indian  lad,  swaddled  in  a  red  and  white 
striped  blanket,  serves  coffee,  good  coffee  too,  and  pan  dulce, 
sweet  bread,  crusted  with  carraway  seeds.  And  here,  too, 
the  great  climbing  engines  are  awaiting  us,  snorting  and  blow- 
ing off  steam  like  angered  bulls  eager  to  charge  the  toreador- 
hills  which  blot  out  the  world  ahead  of  us.  We  need  both,  for 
the  train  is  to  be  cut  into  two — one  engine  will  not  carry  us 
safely  up  the  perilous  slope — and  the  Pullman  carriages  in  a 
few  minutes  rumble  out  ahead  of  us. 

We  have  struck  up  a  friendship  with  the  car-conductor — 
a  half-blood  nigger  from  Cuba,  and  a  delightful  companion, 
who  speaks  English  well  and  has  already  told  us  more  about 
Mexico  than  a  dozen  encyclopedia  articles,  and  as,  munching 
a  last  mouthful  of  roll,  we  climb  into  our  car,  he  gives  us  a 
friendly  warning  to  be  on  the  look-out  in  some  fifteen  minutes 
for  a  queer  sight,  the  Pullman  half  of  the  train  climbing  the 
mountains  above  us.  If  you  think  of  a  mountain  and  then  draw 
round  it  in  your  mind  a  spiral  line  as  if  it  was  a  vast  cone-shaped 
screw,  you  will  gain  an  idea  of  what  the  two  trains  were  going 
to  do.  They  were  going  to  wind  up  from  the  valley  round  and 
round  the  scalped  faces  of  the  mountains  to  a  height  of  8,000 
feet  above  sea-level.  Six  thousand  feet  of  this  alpine  work 
is  done  in  fifteen  miles  of  rail  after  leaving  Orizaba  Station 
during  a  space  of  two  hours  !  A  gradient  of  one  in  thirteen 
and  a  fifth  !  It  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  this  miracle  of 
engineering  skill  was  achieved  by  Englishmen,  and  that  in 
the  long  years  since,  so  perfect  was  their  work,  no  serious 
accident  has  ever  occurred. 

The  engine  soon  gets  to  grips  with  its  titan  task.     Over 


A   BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW    OF    MEXICO  15 

us  on  the  right  we  see  the  vast  mountains  close, — towering 
upward  as  a  huge  wave  looms  above  the  swimmer  sunk  in  its 
trough, — those  eternal  hills  up  to  the  barren  fastnesses  of  which 
the  gallant  Cortes  and  his  five  hundred  climbed  four  centuries 
ago,  after  he  had  destroyed  his  boats  at  Vera  Cruz  that  there 
might  be  no  looking  backward.  Slowly  we  wind  round  the 
base  of  the  mountain,  then  we  bend  back  again  on  a  new  spiral 
till  the  lights  of  Orizaba  Station  twinkle  ahead  of  us  instead 
of  behind  us.  Once  more  round  and  the  cars  tilt  outward, 
outward,  till  it  seems  we  are  at  an  impossible  angle  if  we  are 
to  keep  the  metals.  Two  or  three  more  spirals,  and  we  have 
won  this  first  hill,  and  here  is  our  next  monster  ;  and  as  we 
bend  round  the  last  of  the  conquered  one  you  look  right  across 
the  valley,  hundreds  of  feet  deep,  to  where  absolutely  opposite 
is  the  meagre  metal  band  running  round  the  face  of  the  still 
higher  hill.  Talk  of  horse-shoe  curves  !  So  acute  seems  the 
bend  that  one  wonders  how  the  most  perfect  bogey-wheels 
can  take  it.  But  we  do  take  it,  till  we  in  the  front  cars  seem 
to  be  looking  right  into  the  hinder  ones  where  huddle  in  the 
dim  light  Indians  as  tightly  packed  as  sardines  in  a  tin.  The 
grinding  of  the  brakes  ;  the  short  sharp  pants  of  the  engine, 
the  fierce  glare  from  its  opened  furnace,  the  figures  of  the 
stokers  silhouetted  ink-black  against  the  flame-red ;  the  slow 
creak-creak  as  the  wheels  turn  and  turn  again  to  an  ever  new 
curve,  make  a  scene  unparalleled.  Every  few  minutes  sinister 
figures,  slouch-hatted,  scarlet  blankets  thrown  round  them  to 
chin-height,  men  who  in  the  dim  light  look  terrifyingly  brigand- 
like, pass  through  the  cars,  in  their  hands  swinging  lamps. 
These  are  the  brake-men — two  to  a  car — upon  whose  untiring 
nerve  the  safety  of  the  train  largely  hangs. 

And  now  as  we  enter  upon  a  new  curve,  sure  enough  right 
above,  like  some  giant  glow-worm  creeping  sluggish  up  the 
hill,  is  the  Pullman  half  of  our  train.  We  have  just  caught 
sight  of  it,  and  it  twinkles  on  the  curve  ahead  and  twists  and 
contorts  itself  round  the  hill  tiU  it  seems  to  be  doubling  back 
upon  us.  At  one  moment  we  are  on  the  same  curve,  and  not 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  separates  the  two  trains.  What  if  the 
Pullman  brakes  gave  ?  And  then  it  has  twisted  itself  out  of 
our  sight,  only  to  reappear  a  moving  gleam  of  light  in  the  black 
woodlands  overhead.  But  look  eastward  !  What  a  sight !  We 
have  climbed  over  two  thousand  feet  now,  and  far  below  us 
stretch  limitless  the  moonlit  hot-lands.  It  is  all  black,  that  dis- 
tance, save  where,  a  bed  of  light,  the  cotton  factory  of  Rio 


i6  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Blanco  steals  into  view  beneath  that  hill  on  the  right.  Now  it 
twinkles  ahead,  now  behind  us.  Now  we  seem  running  past  it 
again,  but  infinitely  far  away  ;  and  then  we  lose  it  altogether 
and  bend  into  a  dark  curve  between  two  hills.  As  we  lean 
out  of  the  windows  the  car  tilts  till  we  see  no  permanent  way 
beneath  us.  We  look  sheer  down  into  a  gorge  which  cannot  be 
less  than  five  hundred  feet  deep.  Away  down  there  we  see  what 
are  huge  trees  :  they  look  shrubs  ;  a  wide  river  which  seems 
a  brook,  broken  here  and  there  by  waterfalls  over  rocks,  as 
large  as  houses,  which  look  mere  pebbles.  Against  the  silvered 
sky  rise,  jagged-toothed,  line  upon  line  of  hills,  roughly  pointed, 
the  cone  shape  of  volcanoes,  and  as  we  twist  out  of  the  black 
gorge — greatest  sight  of  all ! — rises  the  vast  apex  of  Orizaba, 
dwarfing  the  meaner  masses  around,  her  snowy  peak  silvered 
by  the  moon  into  a  diamond-brightness.  Looking  out  across 
that  world  of  hills  upon  that  queenly  height  one  understands 
why  men  have  worshipped  mountains. 

But  while  we  have  been  dodging  from  window  to  window 
like  village  schoolboys  on  a  treat-day,  the  lamps  of  the  car 
have  been  shrouded  in  green-baize  hoods,  and  our  Mexican 
fellow-travellers,  indifferent  to  Orizaba's  majesty  and  the 
angle  of  the  carriages,  have  stretched  themselves  into  all  sorts 
of  uneasy  attitudes  on  the  Procrustean  seats,  and  sleep.  Even 
our  good  conductor,  weary  of  cigarettes,  has  turned  up  his 
collar,  and  with  folded  arms  nods  his  peak-capped  head  till 
he  is  to  be  roused  by  the  jolting  of  the  train  into  Esperanza, 
And  it  is  getting  cold.  Blase  with  the  wonders  of  the  climb, 
we  close  the  windows  and,  unbuckling  portmanteaux,  gratefully 
wrap  ourselves  into  rugs  and  ulsters. 

But  our  companions  are  not  all  sleeping.  There  are  two 
of  them  very  wide  awake,  and  they  have  much  reason  to  be. 
The  prisoner  and  his  guard  face  each  other,  smoking  cigarettes, 
while  the  odd  detective  sleeps  on  the  next  seat,  his  head  pil- 
lowed on  a  thick  hooded  cloak  rolled  military  fashion.  It  is 
an  armed  peace  between  the  guarded  and  the  guardian,  and 
it  is  presently  to  develop  into  almost  open  war.  But  first  a 
little  of  the  prisoner's  history,  and  then  for  a  look  at  him. 

Vera  Cruz  State  is  rich  in  criminals,  and  you  can  get  your- 
self murdered  very  cheaply  round  about  there.  This  fellow 
would  have  done  it  for  you  for  the  ridiculous  sum  of  two  shil- 
lings (a  dollar) ;  but  he  can't  oblige  you  now,  for  he  is  going 
up  to  Mexico  City  to  be  shot.  He  is  only  twenty-eight,  yet 
he  has  committed  six  murders  "  on  his  own,"  and  has  had  as 


A   BIRD'S-EYE   VIEW   OF    MEXICO  17 

his  accomplice  in  other  crimes  an  older  man,  already  in  the 
hands  of  the  authorities,  who  is  credited  with  twenty !  This 
latter  criminal,  long  "  wanted,"  was  locally  known  as  El  Tigre 
(The  Tiger),  and,  cornered  at  last,  he  suspected,  as  such  knaves 
wiU,  that  his  young  friend  had  given  him  away.  So  he  gave 
as  good  as  he  thought  he  had  got — such  information  to  the 
pohce  as  has  resulted  in  that  queerly  small  deUcate  hand  over 
there  being  anchored  by  nasty  cold  steel  to  the  iron  seat. 

They  are  queerly  delicate  hands.  We  have  seen  him  stroke 
his  black  hair  with  the  free  one,  and  you  would  have  taken 
it  for  a  woman's,  so  light  was  the  build  of  the  fingers,  so  small 
the  darkened  blue  of  the  nails.  But  if  his  claws  are  frail,  he 
is  a  monster  in  very  truth.  His  six  murders  have  been  callous 
butcher- work  enough.  He  has  shot  a  pedlar  for  the  wretched 
dollar  in  his  wallet ;  he  has  battered  the  brains  out  of  an  aged 
traveller  for  half  as  much  again,  and  for  the  Indian  girl  whom 
he  had  made  his  mistress  he  had  nothing  but  a  knife  buried 
to  its  hilt  in  the  soft  brown  breast  which  beat  with  love  of  this 
human  fiend.  Let  us  pass  down  the  car  under  pretext  of 
necessity,  and  have  a  good  look  at  him.  A  rounded  boyish 
face,  black-browed,  his  dark  eyes  shaded  by  rich  black  lashes, 
a  fuU  red  sensuous  mouth,  bitten  in  at  the  comers  in  a  way 
which  tells  its  tale  of  cynical,  sensual  selfishness,  and  shaded 
by  a  boy's  growth  of  moustache,  he  has  just  the  vicious  beauty 
calculated  to  eat  its  way  to  the  hearts  of  tropic  maids,  who 
like  their  northern  sisters  long  to  have,  but,  unlike  them,  must 
have.  But  look  at  the  shape  of  the  bullet  head  and  jutting 
brow  !  See  the  animal  glare  with  which  he  meets  your  curious 
stare  !  There's  the  murderer.  Ye  gods  !  it  is  the  face  of  a 
wolf  as  it  lifts  its  grey  muzzle,  blood-spattered,  from  the  lamb's 
bleeding  carcase.  There  is  no  mercy  in  those  eyes  :  he  is  the 
foe  of  aU,  he  has  ranged  himself  as  enemy  of  mankind  ;  and 
the  jut  of  the  skull  suggests  the  truth — ^how  impotent  we  are 
in  moulding  our  hves  ;  how  we  bring  with  us,  ready  written, 
the  chapters  of  our  eternal  past  to  shape  our  passing  present 
somehow,  somewhere,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  into  an  escape  into 
an  eternal  future.  You  would  not  dare  say  as  you  saw  the 
radiant  man's  health  in  him,  the  beauty  of  his  flesh,  that  he 
was  a  lost  soul.  But  heavens  !  what  a  climb  he  has  before  him, 
a  climb  at  which  these  climbing  engines  of  our  train  are  as 
water-babies  toddhng  over  sand-castles  on  the  beach. 

It  was  queer  to  watch  him,  to  thus  spend  the  night  with 
a  murderer,  such  a  murderer  1     It  was  fascinating  to  try  to 


i8  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

imagine  his  thoughts.  Really  he  seemed  to  have  none ;  per- 
haps it  was  mercifully  so  ordained.  No  human  brain  could 
surely  bear  a  reaUsation  of  such  crimes  as  his.  A  mental 
numbness,  Nature's  anodyne,  must  overtake  the  brutal 
criminal,  like  the  sullen  drowsiness  of  the  man-eating  tiger 
in  his  cage.  He  sat  there,  nonchalantly  puffing  at  intermin- 
able cigarettes  which  his  captor  handed  him,  his  red-white-and- 
blue  blanket  thrown  round  his  shoulders  and  contrasting 
vividly  with  the  yellow-whiteness  of  the  neck  and  dead-black 
of  his  cropped  head.  He  knew  he  was  going  to  be  shot.  .  .  . 
But  stay  !  Not  so  fast !  Perhaps  he  didn't.  What's  this  ? 
The  detective  leaps  up,  the  sleeping  one  wakes  :  they  have 
sprung  on  the  blanketed  figure.  What's  all  the  matter  ? 
Simply  that  as  the  young  brute  smoked  and  chatted  he  has 
twisted  and  twisted  his  lithe,  small  hand  till  it  slips  from  the 
jarvies,  and  he  sits  there,  as  the  train  rolls  heavily  onward 
through  the  mountain  gorges,  ready  in  a  minute  to  spring  out 
of  the  car-window  and  be  lost  in  the  woods.  But  he  is  too 
late.  Some  jerk  of  the  manacled  arm  has  aroused  suspicion. 
The  blanket  is  whipped  off.  The  steel  band  snaps  again  on 
that  delicate  wrist.  The  two  detectives  close  up  at  his  sides. 
He  says  nothing  ;  he  never  flinches,  never  moves.  He  has 
gambled  with  his  life  and  lost :  now  he  has  lost  again,  that's 
all ;  that  and  the  ounce  of  lead  which  awaits  his  savage  heart 
in  Mexico.  He  motions  that  he  will  sleep,  and  as  the  train 
rattles  into  Esperanza  and  the  chilling  air  from  the  mountains 
makes  your  teeth  chatter,  he  lies  sound  asleep,  his  cruel  face, 
almost  beautiful  in  repose,  pillowed  on  his  rounded  arm. 

There  are  more  coffee  and  sweet  rolls  to  be  had  at 
Esperanza,  what  time  the  climbing  engine  is  unhooked  and 
car-conductors — their  collars  to  their  ears — stamp  their  feet 
and,  cabman-fashion,  beat  their  breasts  to  keep  warm.  And 
then  we  are  off  again,  this  time  fairly  on  the  level,  for  though 
we  have  still  two  thousand  feet  to  climb  ere  we  reach  the  dreary 
plains  around  the  capital,  we  have  more  than  150  miles  in  which 
to  do  it.  It  is  between  one  and  two,  and  in  the  past  six  hours 
the  temperature  has  fallen  thirty-five  or  forty  degrees.  We 
are  glad  to  have  the  windows  closed,  save  at  the  quaint  little 
Indian  towns  where  on  the  low  platforms  stand  rows  of  Mexican 
porters  looking  for  all  the  world  like  a  chorus  of  conspirators  in 
a  comic  opera,  their  blankets  drawn  right  across  their  faces  and 
mouths,  yashmak-fashion,  their  steeple  hats  towering  black 
in  the  starlight. 


A   BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW   OF   MEXICO  19 

For  the  next  two  hours  or  so  the  uplands  roll  dark  and 
unbroken  around  us.  A  cloud-mist  lies  on  the  country,  and 
the  brilliancy  of  the  moon  seems  fading.  And  then  of  a 
sudden — or  was  it  that  we  had  slept  awhile  ? — there  climbs 
into  the  sky  the  herald  star,  Hesperus.  Have  you  watched 
many  dawns  ?  Have  you  noticed  how  Hesperus  seems  to  put 
all  other  stars  out,  like  the  lamplighter  on  his  early  morning 
visit  to  the  street  lamps  ?  He  glitters  so  radiantly  that 
positively  the  heavens  seem  one  star  and  a  few  light 
specks,  and  even  the  moon  looks  paler.  He  is  blazing  his 
brightest  now,  a  yellow-golden  light  like  some  giant  Brazilian 
diamond,  and  there,  away  there,  far  across  the  mountain  tops, 
the  Wolf's  Tail  sweeps  the  horizon.  The  mist  is  rising,  rolling 
away ;  far  off  the  shadowy  hills  lighten  from  black  to  grey, 
the  sinking  cloud-banks  are  embroidered  with  a  golden  fringe, 
and  the  dim  morning  light  steals  into  the  frowsy,  dusty  car, 
•outlining  the  sleeping  figures,  exposing  with  an  unwelcome 
frankness  the  up-all-night  look  of  our  unkempt  neighbours, 
twisted  into  uncouth  positions  in  their  uneasy  sleep. 

"...  And  in  the  East 
God  made  Himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn." 

Awful  it  is  in  its  majesty — this  waking  of  the  sleeping 
•world.  It  is  awful  on  the  Essex  marshes  or  viewed  from  a 
mean  window  in  Clapham.  But  here,  what  a  spectacle ! 
Heaped  up,  mass  upon  mass,  the  mountains  took  the  glad 
signal,  blushing  their  grey  tops  into  rose.  Far  behind  us 
looms  Orizaba,  no  longer  diamond-cold  in  her  chastity  of 
snow,  but  roseate  with  a  delicate  pink,  the  tint  of  the  neck- 
feathers  of  a  wood-dove.  Then  the  rose  of  the  sky  turns 
to  crimson,  and  far  to  our  left  the  twin  peaks  of  Popocatapetl 
and  Iztaccihuatl,  towering  above  the  nearer  ranges,  don 
crimson  crowns  on  their  snow.  In  the  months  that  were  to 
come  we  were  destined  to  see  many  a  dawn  in  many  varied 
scenes.  We  were  to  watch  from  a  small  sailing-boat  the 
chill  gold  gleams  steal  over  the  face  of  the  ocean  towards  us  ; 
camped  in  some  ruined  temple  we  were  to  see  "  the  swift 
footsteps  of  the  lovely  light  "  sweep  over  miles  of  grey-green 
woodland,  reddening  the  carved  porches  and  facades  of  palace 
and  shrine,  majestic  in  their  grey  ruin  ;  we  were  to  wake  in 
tropic  forest  to  find  the  first  glories  of  the  sun  darting  beams  at 
us  through  arcades  of  tree  network,  turning  the  myriad  dew- 
drops  on  the  leaves  and  branches  into  translucent  diamonds ; 


20  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

but  the  wonder  of  that  dawn  amid  Mexico's  volcanoes  has 
never  had,  can  never  have,  for  us  a  rival  spectacle. 

With  the  light  the  face  of  the  country  altered  as  if  the 
.wand  of  an  agricultural  wizard  had  been  waved  over  it.  The 
deep  rich  greens  of  the  hot-lands  had  gone.  Instead  were 
wide  stretches  of  stony  upland,  barren  wastes  of  moor,  spotted 
with  swamp,  hedged  in  by  great  scarped  spikes  of  volcanic 
grey  stone,  and  by  huge  bald  bluffs  imder  which  nestled  here 
and  there  clusters  of  adobe  huts  built  round  the  plain  white 
stone  churches  standing  in  gardens  shaded  by  olive  and  orange 
trees  and  bright  with  the  red-flowered  wild  pepper-bush. 
At  the  side  pathetic  little  cemeteries,  the  rudely  cut  wooden 
crosses  on  the  graves  fluttering  their  faded  coloured-paper 
wreaths  and  withered  flowers.  And  here,  waving  pale  in  the 
early  light,  are  acres  and  acres  of  maguey,  the  giant  cactus 
rising  more  than  man's  height,  from  which  is  crushed  out 
'pulque,  the  national  drink  of  Mexico,  a  milky  liquid  tasting 
like  sour  ginger-beer.  And  between  these  miles  of  cactus 
and  stone  are  fields  yellowing  with  Indian  com,  the  picturesque 
figures  of  the  Indian  harvesters,  grouped  round  a  mule-waggon 
or  standing  idle,  sickle  in  hand,  to  watch  our  train,  brightening 
the  landscape  with  their  scarlet  blankets.  Mexico's  world 
is  very  much  astir  now,  and,  as  we  pull  up  at  the  next  station, 
scores  of  Indian  women  and  girls,  slatterns  most,  stand  peril- 
ously near  the  wheels,  stretching  out  to  the  passengers  at 
the  passing  windows  trays  of  weird  foods,  chopped  meats 
wedged  between  ungainly,  underdone  tortillas  (the  Indian 
maize  biscuit  bread),  and  the  skinny,  cooked  limbs  of  very 
much  disarticulated  fowls,  sour-looking  oranges  and  half-ripe 
bananas,  with  tins  of  watery  milk.  On  the  platforms  every- 
where stood  rurales — country  police — cloaked  to  the  chin  in 
bright  scarlet  blankets,  beneath  which  showed  the  tight  grey 
trousers,  silver-laced,  and  the  bright,  burnished  sheath  of  a 
sword,  their  hats  sugar-loaf  shaped  felts  of  grey  ornamented 
with  the  metal  numbers  of  their  district.  In  their  hand, 
the  butt  end  resting  on  the  ground,  they  hold  a  rifle.  These 
fellows,  in  their  tight  breeches  and  neat  monkey-jackets  of 
grey  tailed  at  their  waists  like  an  Eton  boy's,  are  fine  figures, 
one  of  the  living  testimonies  to  President  Diaz's  prudence  ; 
for  they  have  one  and  all  been  recruited  from  the  ranks  of 
those  hordes  of  brigands  which  thirty  years  back  made  Mexico 
the  warmest  place  in  the  world  to  travel  in. 


~~~n 


'  ^ 


A    BIRD'S-EYE   VIEW   OF    MEXICO  21 

And  now  we  are  on  the  plain  of  Mexico,  ringed  round  with 
small  cone-shaped  hills,  a  plain  of  bumt-up  grass  on  which 
small  stunted  cattle,  horses  and  donkeys  were  wandering, 
disconsolate,  to  find  the  greenest  spots.  Here  and  there  is  a 
swampy  place,  and  round  where  the  water  had  dried  the 
slaty  blue  soil  showed  up  in  patches  broken  by  the  giant 
flat-faced,  oval  leaf  of  the  Nopal  cactus,  which  is  to  Mexico 
what  the  rose  is  to  England,  figuring  in  the  national  arms — 
viz.  an  eagle  perched  on  the  Nopal  with  a  writhing  snake  in 
its  talons.  By  the  rail  side  runs  a  dusty  road,  and  along  this 
trot  Indians,  the  men  with  packs  on  their  backs,  the  women 
with  babies  slung  on  their  backs,  while  shabby  dogs  scout 
around  the  party.  Here  is  a  waggon  drawn  by  two  mules 
jolting  into  the  suburban  markets,  and  there  is  a  mule  loaded 
with  empty  pulque-tins,  his  master  seated  literally  on  the 
animal's  tail,  returning  from  his  midnight  visit  to  Moctezuma's 
city.  It  is  all  very  picturesque,  and  a  little  sad,  as  we  rumble 
past  the  shabby  Indian  wayside  huts,  and  tiny  brown  boys 
and  girls  stand  naked  in  the  stony  gardens  to  wave  us  a  greet- 
ing. All  the  Indians  on  the  plain  here  look  so  unprosperous, 
and  the  starved,  ignoble  nature  of  the  place  adds  to  one's 
impression  of  the  desolate  life  of  a  once  great  race. 

But  now  we  are  nearing  the  plain's  edge.  Sparse  huts 
of  adobe  and  the  tents  of  rags  stretched  on  crossed  poles  are 
giving  place  to  stone  houses.  Pretentious  churches,  gardens 
rich  with  fruit  trees,  mills  and  factories,  sidings  occupied 
by  heavily  loaded  luggage-trains,  and  the  crowds  which 
board  our  cars  at  each  station  mark  our  approach  to  Mexico 
City.  We  rattle  on  through  miles  of  squahd  suburbs,  over 
level  crossings  where  frowsy  gatherings  of  half-naked  Indian 
women  and  children  watch,  with  animal  apathy,  the  progress 
of  the  train,  till  as  eight  strikes  we  enter  the  city  lying  within 
a  ring  of  volcanic  hills. 

Viewed  from  the  car  window  there  is  nothing  in  the  least 
impressive  about  Mexico  City.  A  dreary  stretch  of  common- 
place Spanish  houses,  flat-roofed,  imrelieved  by  cupola  or 
minaret,  by  tower  or  spire.  The  station  is  as  dull :  a  melan- 
choly wooden  structure,  oval-roofed,  somewhat  like  the  biggest 
engine-house  at  Crewe  or  Swindon.  The  first  hint  that  we 
are  in  a  most  unpromising  land  is  the  discovery  that  there  is 
no  refreshment-room  where  breakfast  can  be  had.  But  the 
Mexicans,  we  remember,  do  not  breakfast,  and  a  shabby 
yellow  door  labelled  "  Cafe  "  leads  into  a  very  squalid  room 


22  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

where,  at  a  wooden  table,  cups  of  coffee  and  a  basket  of  yester- 
day's or  the  day  before  yesterday's  rolls  are  brought  to  us 
by  a  slatternly  big-bosomed  Mexican  dame,  who  has  not  yet 
washed  or  combed  her  hair,  and  whose  dirty,  ungirt,  betrained 
cotton  dress  and  cloth  slippers,  trodden  down  at  the  heels, 
make  an  unattractive  picture. 

There  are  three  types  of  cabs  in  Mexico  City  ;  the  blue, 
the  red,  and  the  yellow.  The  first  charges  the  unwary  voyager 
a  dollar  (two  shillings)  for  one  and  three-quarter  miles,  for 
which  the  red's  fee  is  but  half.  In  cleanliness  and  comfort 
there  is  nothing  to  choose  between  the  two.  The  yellow  cab 
is  pestilential,  as  its  fluttering  quarantine  paper  flag  suggests. 
It  is  ramshackle  and  verminous,  and,  having  earned  an 
ill-name,  is  dying  out,  destined  soon  to  be  as  extinct  as  the 
dodo.  We  hired  a  red  cab,  and  rattled  off  through  cobbled 
streets,  lined  with  small  shops,  broad,  well-pavemented  but 
garbage-littered,  into  the  heart  of  the  city. 


CHAPTER    II 

MEXICO   CITY  AND  THE   MEXICANS 

MEXICO  CITY  is  a  combination  of  Spanish  squalor 
and  Paris-cum-New-York  civilisation — very  lightly 
veneered  over  in  some  places.  It  is  some  five  miles  across, 
but  its  business  life  centres  in  a  square  mile.  The  busiest 
streets  are  narrow — such  as  the  Calle  San  Francisco,  which  is 
as  narrow  as  Cheapside  and  just  as  full  of  traffic.  Mexico  is 
thoroughly  cosmopohtan,  and  this  is  particularly  noticeable 
in  the  matter  of  trade.  Thirty  per  cent,  of  the  large  shops 
and  stores  are  American,  Enghsh  and  French  ;  the  greatest 
trading  concerns  are  run  by  American  capital ;  railway  and 
steamship  offices,  banks,  hotels,  restaurants,  land  and  mining 
companies,  are  in  the  majority  of  cases  staffed  and  engineered 
by  foreigners.  In  the  main  streets  typical  Spanish  buildings 
have  given  way  to  often  quite  sky-scraping  erections  of 
obvious  American  build— eight  or  nine-storeyed  masses  of 
flats  and  offices. 

The  most  insistent  impression  one  brings  away  from  the 
city  is  the  constantly  vivid  contrast  of  an  ostentatious  civilisa- 
tion (it  is  as  superficial  as  the  breeding  of  a  parvenu,  as  forced 
as  the  frigid  air  of  superiority  of  a  suburban  grande  dame) 
with  an  Indian  barbarism.  Wealth  and  luxury  rub  shoulders 
with  the  abject  and  savage  poverty  of  the  wandering  Indian 
poor.  In  the  city  of  his  forefathers,  metamorphosed  beyond 
all  recognition,  the  Indian  lags  superfluous — spectral,  a  very 
Banquo  at  the  feast.  You  walk  in  the  Calle  San  Francisco 
on  wonderfully  laid  pavements,  past  shops  a-ghtter  with 
jewels  which  would  not  shame  the  gem  windows  of  the 
Boulevard  des  Italiens,  past  restaurants — veritable  maisons 
dories,  with  ornate  porticoes  in  which  stalwart  Spanish  door- 
keepers in  gold-laced  uniforms  swing  open  the  portals  of  these 
gastronomic  paradises  for  dames  of  high  degree.     You  watch 

23 


24  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

an  everlasting  procession  of  wonderful  carriages,  glittering 
with  veneer,  the  black  or  white  Arab  horses  curving  glorious 
necks  adorned  with  silver  and  brass  chains  and  trappings, 
and  .  .  .  just  under  your  very  nose,  crawling  out  of  the 
gutter  to  save  his  wretched  blistered  foot  from  that  rubber- 
tyred  wheel,  is  such  a  blend  of  filth  and  poverty  as  only  a 
great  luxurious  city  has  the  secret  of  manufacturing.  Desolate, 
his  lank,  uncombed  black  hair  smamed  with  sweat  on  his 
grimy  forehead,  a  blanket  which  you  would  gladly  pay  a 
sovereign  not  to  touch  thrown  round  the  stooping  shoulders, 
ragged  cotton  drawers,  tightening  at  the  calf — coolie  fashion — 
and  slit  and  rent  in  half  a  dozen  places,  showing  the  dull, 
brown-red  skin  beneath,  the  thin,  hunger-haunted  face  all 
cheek-bones  and  lustreless  black  eyes,  the  descendant  of 
Moctezuma's  warrior  shambles  and  halts  down  the  gutter 
edge.  The  Mexican  beauty,  stepping  daintily  from  that 
victoria,  enamelled  in  rich  cobalt  blue  and  black,  to  enter  the 
French  glove-shop,  pulls  her  silken  skirts  tighter  round  her 
plump  figure.  Was  it  for  the  benefit  of  that  passing  dandy, 
or  did  she  really  condescend  to  see  the  Horror  in  the  gutter  ? 
It's  nothing,  Senorita  :  just  a  "  noble  savage  "  after  a  few 
centuries  of  civilisation. 

In  buildings  of  any  really  striking  architectural  beauty 
Mexico  City  is  curiously  poor.  The  Iturbide  Hotel — once  the 
palace  of  the  Emperor  Iturbide — is  a  fine  example  of  the  best 
Spanish  house-building,  with  its  carved  fa9ade,  its  charmingly 
cool,  balconied  patio  and  its  dignified  pillared  stairways. 
The  National  Palace,  at  the  gateways  of  which  stand  shuffling, 
squat,  unbusinesslike-looking  Mexican  soldiers — is  a  two- 
storeyed  quadrangular  mass  of  yellow  stone  with  no  feature 
of  note — about  as  ornamental  as  the  Privy  Council  Office  in 
Whitehall.  It  faces  on  the  chief  plaza,  and  thus  confronts 
the  cathedral — ^greatest  disappointment  of  all. 

Pictures  of  this  huge  petrified  triumph  of  Catholicism 
over  Sun  Worship  (for  the  church  was  built  on  the  site  of 
Moctezuma's  gorgeous  Temple  of  the  Sun)  give  a  very  false 
impression  of  grandeur.  We  had  heard,  too,  much  of  the 
marvels  within.  Nothing  could  be  more  disappointing. 
Perhaps  the  pile  suffers  somewhat  from  its  environment. 
The  Grand  Plaza  is  not  grand  at  all.  It  has  no  architectural 
merits  ;  it  is  crowded  with  rows  of  tramcars  and  bordered 
by  mean-looking  shops  in  stuffy  arcades.  Round  the  cathedral 
run  pavements  bordered  by  poorly  kept  flower-beds  and  rag* 


MEXICO   CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  25 

roofed  booths,  and  then  within  the  cathedral  close  is  a  yard 
half  cobble,  half  mangy  grass,  wherein  squat  or  sleep  innumer- 
able beggars,  fruit-sellers,  lottery-ticket  vendors,  the  very 
riff-raff  of  the  capital.  The  railings  are  broken  in  places, 
advertisement-posters  and  street-boy  scrawlings  disfigure  the 
church  walls,  large  pieces  of  the  surface  of  which  are  broken 
away.  PoUte  language  forbids  a  description  of  what  the 
surface  of  this  God's  acre  is  like  :  suffice  it  to  say  that  the 
indescribably  filthy  habits  of  the  Mexicans  render  it  no  place 
for  the  unwary  walker.  To  an  Englishman  this  precinct  of 
their  greatest  church,  so  vivid  a  contrast  with  the  velvety 
lawns  and  cleanly  sanctity  of  such  a  cathedral  precinct  as  that 
at  Westminster  Abbey,  is  eloquent  of  the  Mexican  character. 

The  cathedral  itself  is  a  gigantic  erection,  but  there  is 
nothing  in  the  least  pleasing  about  it.  It  seems  a  hotchpotch 
of  architectural  styles  (it  was  near  a  century  a-building),  like 
a  dog  with  no  pedigree,  or  perhaps  with  too  much  pedigree — 
a  httle  bit  of  everything  and  the  rest  church.  To  any  one 
who  has  stood  in  the  roar  of  London's  traffic  on  Ludgate  Hill 
and  looked  eastward  upon  the  superb  grey  severity  of  St.  Paul's, 
•such  a  building  can  mean  little.  But  step  inside,  and  it  is 
worse,  far  worse.  What  is  it  which  so  often  makes  the  in- 
teriors of  even  the  larger  Cathohc  churches  so  vulgar  ?  It 
must  be  the  gilt  and  colour,  the  ostentatious  striving  after 
effect,  the  prostitution  of  what  should  be  divinely  chaste  to 
the  lewd  sensuaUty  of  the  eye.  Catholicism  is  a  sensuous 
•creed.  It  has  been  said  a  miUion  times,  and  it  is  a  million 
times  true.  The  sincerely  godly  man  should  be  able  to  worship 
his  Maker  as  well  on  the  top  of  a  Camberwell  omnibus  as  in 
a  cathedral.  Catholicism,  cynical,  knows  the  sincerely  godly 
are  few  and  far  between,  and  she  holds  her  children  to  her  by 
a  tawdry  dazzle,  an  incensed  meretriciousness.  The  interior 
■of  Mexico  Cathedral  was  one  of  the  vulgarest  sights  it  has  ever 
been  our  misfortune  to  look  on.  It  was  rankly,  irretrievably 
vulgar.  The  great  reredos  towered  towards  the  domed  roof, 
a  shameless  sheet  of  dazzling  gold.  Your  eyes  ached  at  it. 
It  may  have  cost  £300,000,  but  to  the  true  lover  of  churches 
it  was  worth  about  twopence-halfpenny.  The  walls  blazoned 
with  gold-framed  pictures  of  the  Virgin  and  Saints,  not  one, 
not  two,  but  dozens,  like  the  ill-assorted  pictures  in  a  pork- 
packing  millionaire's  dining-room.  The  merits  of  the  paint- 
ings, if  they  had  any,  were  lost  in  the  nauseating  gold  of 
their    heavy    frames.     Croesus    never   loathed    the    precious 


26  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

metal  as  we  did,  when,  shading  our  eyes,  we  gazed  up  at  the- 
abominable  background  of  the  High  Altar.  Smaller  altars- 
there  were  everywhere  around  :  innumerable  saints  in  tawdry 
metal  crowns  fluttered  frowsy  linens ;  coarsely  realistic 
pictures  of  the  Passion  made  you  blush  for  your  Catholic- 
fellow-creatures.  Canopies  of  satin  and  brocade  over  episcopal 
stalls  and  gilded  marble  pulpits  brought  to  one's  mind  the 
irony  of  it  all :  the  gorgeous- vestmented  priests  daring  to- 
ape  vicegerency  for  Him  who  bade  His  ministers  "  go  forth 
neither  with  purse  nor  scrip."  "  Verily  they  toil  not  neither" 
do  they  spin ;  yet  Solomon,"  etc.  Yes,  right  there  on  the- 
ill-laid  pavement  kneels  an  Indian — his  arms  outspread,  his 
fanatic  eyes  lifted  in  an  ecstasy  of  faith  to  the  gilding.  He 
and  thousands  like  him — "  the  hungry  sheep,  look  up  and 
are  not  fed  "  ;  but  the  shepherds  take  care  that  the  flocks- 
feed  them.  They  have  always  got  their  cut  of  juicy  mutton. 
Mexico  is  not  alone.  Alas  !  Sacerdotalism  has  its  dupes  in 
every  land.  We  walked  out  into  the  sunshine,  glad  to  re- 
member that  we  had  stood  in  the  wonderful  Abbey  nave,  our 
eyes  restful  with  its  glorious  grey  chastity,  our  hearts  stilled 
with  that  holy  calm  which  seems  to  bring  so  much  nearer 
"  the  peace  of  God  which  passeth  all  understanding." 

But  if  Mexico  is  poor  in  buildings,  she  has  features  which 
certainly  entitle  her  to  be  called  a  great  city.  The  superb 
Paseo  (there  are  others,  but  fine  as  they  are  they  are  dwarfed 
beside  it)  would  alone  make  a  capital.  Between  two  and  three 
hundred  feet  wide,  lined  with  a  double  row  of  trees  and  beauti- 
fully kept  flower-beds,  its  course  broken,  here  and  there,  by 
circuses  where  stand  noble  statues  centring  lawns  of  velvety 
turf,  it  sweeps  northward,  a  majestic  thoroughfare,  towards- 
Chapultepec — the  Mexican  Hyde  Park — where  stands  the 
Castle  (it  does  not  look  like  one),  the  summer  residence  of 
grim  Porfirio  Diaz.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  view  up 
this  noble  roadway,  and  praise  is  due  to  authorities  who  have 
ordained  that  the  banal  electric  tramcars  shall  take  with  therm 
into  side  streets  the  blighting  vulgarity  of  their  whizzing  bustle. 
At  the  entrance  to  the  Paseo  the  cars  turn  humbly  into  side 
turnings  running  parallel  with  this  monarch  of  highways. 

Another  beautiful  feature  are  the  private  houses.  Along- 
the  Paseo  and  in  the  broad  avenidas  which  branch  off  it 
are  residences  which  really  deserve  the  adjective  "  ideal." 
Two-storeyed,  flat-roofed,  solid  and  yet  not  pawky  in  their 
solidity,  as  most  small  buildings  built  substantially  are  im 


MEXICO   CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  27 

danger  of  becoming  ;  charming  in  their  simphcity  of  design  ; 
the  long  windows  barred  with  artistically  wrought  iron  ; 
green  sun-blinds  drawn  within ;  no  basements,  no  areas, 
but  raised  solid  some  three  feet  from  the  ground-level  and 
approached  by  a  short  flight  of  steps ;  they  look  like  summer- 
houses  of  cool  stone  set  in  the  frame  of  their  exquisite  tropic 
gardens.  You  never  see  their  occupants  (the  rich  Mexicans, 
especially  the  women,  never  walk  out  or  show  themselves 
until  the  hour  for  driving  in  the  Paseo  or  Chapultepec  Park 
arrives),  but  you  envy  them  these  charming  dwellings.  They 
are  the  very  antipodes  of  the  cheap,  run-up-anyhow  heaps 
of  bricks  and  mortar  which  we  are  too  often  content  to  call 
houses. 

The  Mexican  hotels  are  bad  and  expensive.  Strictly 
speaking,  they  are  not  hotels  at  all,  but  large  pretentious 
"  doss-houses  "  ;  for  there  are  as  a  rule  no  restaurants  at- 
tached, no  attempt  made  to  cater  for  the  visitors,  nor  are  there 
any  public  rooms  for  reading  or  writing.  You  hire  a  frowsy 
room,  for  which  you  may  quite  likely  at  such  a  place  as  the 
Hotel  de  Jardin  have  to  pay  six  dollars  (twelve  shillings)  a 
night,  and  the  most  the  management  will  do  for  you  is  ta 
provide  a  cup  of  indifferent  chocolate  and  a  sweet  roll  in  the 
morning,  which  matutinal  orgy,  of  course,  is  not  included  in 
the  room  rent.  You  must "  hunt  "  your  food  elsewhere.  This 
has  its  advantages,  but  it  has  also  grave  disadvantages,  par- 
ticularly as  Mexico  City  is  poorly  equipped  with  reasonably 
cheap,  clean,  eating-places  ;  and  after  a  week  or  so  you  get  res- 
tive and  long  for  the  coffee-room  comforts  of  those  residential 
palaces,  the  Enghsh  hotels.  Nowhere  in  the  world  are  hotels, 
surely,  so  perfect  as  in  England,  so  cheap,  so  homely,  the 
staff  so  courteous.  Nowhere  has  the  traveller  lavished  on 
him  so  many  little  comforts  and  etceteras  of  daily  life,  the 
sumptuous  reading-rooms,  the  writing  conveniences,  all  of 
which  he  never  really  appreciates  till  he  is  condenmed  to  live 
for  a  while  among  "  hotel  savages."  We  had  been  warned, 
too,  of  darker  horrors  in  Mexican  hotels  than  the  lack  of  an 
honest  breakfast  or  an  easy-chair  in  which  to  read  one's  letters. 
Unbidden  guests  shelter  in  even  first-class  establishments  and 
nightly  feast  on  the  visitors.  So  we  stayed  at  the  only  decent 
hotel  in  the  city — according  to  all  reports — the  new  American 
Hotel  St.  Francis  at  the  city  end  of  the  Paseo.  This  had  a 
restaurant  attached,  where  excellent  food  was  served  to  us 


28  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

by  a  perfectly  charming  Indian  waiter,  whose  smile  at  our 
attempts  to  talk  to  him  was  "  sweetness  and  light."  He  was 
not  handsome — he  had  all  the  worst  features  of  the  Mongolian 
type — high  check-bones,  fiattish  face  ;  but  when  that  man 
smiled,  well,  you  just  felt  a  new  optimism  in  the  inherent 
goodness  of  human  nature  steal  on  you.  The  St.  Francis 
was  built  Spanish  fashion  with  a  courtyard,  the  rooms  facing 
on  to  three  galleries,  the  courtyard  forming  a  lounge.  As 
far  as  comfort  went  it  was  nowhere  in  comparison  with  the 
commercial  hotels  in  the  provincial  towns  in  England,  but 
it  sustained  its  reputation  of  being  free  from  vermin,  and  one's 
bed  linen  was  changed  every  day. 

The  climate  of  the  city  is  very  trying  for  any  one  with 
heart  weakness.  Indeed,  to  even  the  robust  the  rarefied  air 
at  such  a  vast  height  as  8,000  feet  brings  a  perpetual  sense 
of  being  fagged  out,  and  a  disagreeably  insistent  panting 
at  the  least  exertion.  We  found  all  the  English  residents 
suffered  from  a  perpetual  malaise,  the  "  tired  feeling  "  of  the 
tonic  advertisements.  Curiously  enough,  too,  the  immense 
altitude,  so  far  exceeding  that  of  Davos  Platz,  does  not  protect 
the  phthisical  and  weak-lunged.  The  death  rate  from  lung 
diseases  is  terrific.  The  days  are  hot  and  the  nights  are 
often  so  cold  that  you  must  wear  your  thickest  overcoat  or 
run  the  risk  of  pneumonia.  A  queer  result  of  this  is  that  the 
streets  are  quite  empty  soon  after  dark.  Till  nine  you  will 
see  a  few  Indians,  only  their  eyes  visible  above  their  blankets, 
straggling  along,  or  a  Mexican  in  closed  carriage  will  dash 
past.  But  later  the  place  becomes  a  city  of  the  dead.  Coming 
back  from  a  dinner  we  walked  through  street  after  street 
and  never  saw  a  soul  (it  was  only  10.30)  save  the  police,  who 
stand  in  the  middle  of  the  roads,  a  lighted  lantern  on  the 
ground  between  their  boots. 

The  city  is  patrolled  after  dark  by  the  Republican  Guard, 
moimted  on  sturdy  Mexican  cobs  and  armed  with  Winchesters, 
heavy  revolvers,  and  swords.  These  men  stand  no  non- 
sense, and  the  consequence  is  that  outwardly  the  capital 
is  one  of  the  most  orderly  in  the  world.  You  scarcely  ever 
see  a  brawl,  you  never  hear  a  voice  raised  in  anger  ;  and  yet 
the  police  are  not  officious.  They  do  not  fidget  or  bustle  : 
they  are  everywhere,  but  they  are  not  obtrusive,  and  they  are 
certainly  most  courteous.  We  asked  the  way  of  one,  and 
he  directed  us.  Some  fifty  yards  on  we  heard  some  one 
running  behind  us,  and  turned  to  see,  with  astonishment. 


MEXICO    CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  29 

the  officer,  who  with  many  bows  explained  that  he  thought 
we  might  have  misunderstood,  so  he  had  run  after  us  to 
personally  put  us  in  the  way.  Surely  pohteness  could 
no  further  go !  Imagine  a  twenty-stone  City  constable 
"  sprinting  "  after  a  Frenchman  who  desired  to  study  the 
architectural  glories  of  "  Ze  house  of  ze  Lor  Maire  "  !  There 
is  no  doubt  we  English  are  phlegmatic. 

If  a  fight  takes  place  in  the  streets,  the  police  arrest  every- 
body, not  only  the  principals  and  their  seconds,  but  all  the 
spectators.  Thus  a  perfectly  harmless  paterfamilias  trudging^ 
back  to  his  home,  yielding  for  a  minute  to  the  curiosity  in- 
herent in  us  all  and  peering  over  the  heads  of  the  crowd  at 
the  struggling  men,  may  find  himself  marched  off  to  the 
lock-up,  where  he  must  spend  the  night — for  there  is  no  bail 
system ;  and  next  morning  he  is  dragged  off  before  a  magis- 
trate as  an  accessory  to  a  street  row  and  fined  according  to 
the  lying  capacities  of  the  police  officers  concerned.  In  Mexica 
you  must  play  the  Levite  and  "  pass  by  on  the  other  side." 

The  streets  are  at  all  times  a  human  kaleidoscope  :  the 
dandy  in  European  dress  ;  the  smart  Mexican  horsemen  in 
tasselled  riding  gear  clattering  down  the  road  ;  the  trim, 
cowboy  with  his  grey  trousers  fitting  like  an  eel's  skin,  silver- 
buttoned,  a  coloured  silk  scarf  round  his  neck,  his  head  adorned 
with  steeple  felt ;  the  wizened  Indian  beldames  in  saffron 
or  blue  cottons  squatting  at  the  church  doors  stretching  out 
skinny  yellow  hands  for  alms  ;  tiny  Indian  girls  carrying 
still  tinier  brothers  and  sisters,  and  at  every  street  comer 
bareheaded  Indian  matrons  at  trestle  stalls  whereon  are 
sweetmeats  and  fruits  for  sale.  One  of  the  queerest  sights 
are  the  fimeral  cars.  Every  corpse  must  by  law  be  buried 
within  twenty-four  hours  of  death,  and  almost  all  day  long 
the  procession  of  tramcars  is  interrupted  by  the  passing  of 
the  only  type  of  hearse  they  have  in  the  capital,  a  hideous 
black  and  white  contrivance  fitted  with  tram- wheels  with 
three  doors  in  a  row  admitting  to  three  shelves  upon  which 
the  coffins  stand.  The  poorer  folk  go  to  the  cemetery  thus 
pigeonholed,  the  rich  have  a  tram  hearse  which  has  a  glass 
cover  so  that  the  coffin  can  be  seen.  All  day  these  monstro- 
sities run  out  of  the  city  followed  by  a  black-painted  tramcar 
for  the  mourners.  The  cemeteries  are  many  miles  out  of 
the  city  and  these  mournful  trams  follow  the  ordinary  ones,  a 
perpetual  reminder  to  the  gay  crowds  of  the  vanity  of  human 
joys.    At  nightfall  the  streets  are  picturesque  in  the  extreme 


30  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

with  the  Indian  handcarts  and  mule  barrows  carrying  paper 
lanterns  (for  every  vehicle  must  have  a  light  after  dark), 
with  the  weirdly  quaint  muffled  figures  of  the  Indians  showing 
up  in  the  fitful  gleams. 

We  must  say  a  word  about  the  Museum.  It  is  a  building 
just  out  of  the  cathedral  plaza,  and  is  approached  through 
a  pretty  courtyard  filled  with  palms  and  flowering  shrubs. 
But  within  is  the  most  melancholy  medley  and  muddle  which 
it  is  possible  to  conceive.  With  opportunities  unexampled, 
with  a  wealth  of  treasures,  the  very  finest  of  all  Aztec  and 
Mayan  relics,  the  curators,  if  one  must  misuse  the  word  so 
sadly,  have  proved  themselves  about  as  fit  to  arrange  and 
govern  a  national  museum  as  schoolboys.  There  is  literally 
no  order  ;  apparently  no  intelligence  at  all  has  been  exercised 
in  the  cataloguing  of  the  exhibits  ;  and  the  elementary  pre- 
caution of  labelling  each  object  with  its  place  and  date  of 
finding  has  been  almost  entirely  ignored.  Thus  you  come 
across  a  case  of  ancient  pottery  obviously  of  all  ages  and 
from  all  parts  of  the  Republic,  and  this  is  called  "  Ancient 
Aztec  Pottery,"  which  a  large  part  of  it  is  certainly  not. 
Case  after  case  witnesses  to  this  ineptitude.  Nothing  is 
labelled ;  or  if  it  is,  the  label  is  patently  incorrect.  At  the 
door  stand  two  cases  facing  each  other.  One  is  called 
"  Forged  Pottery  "  ;  the  other,  "  Genuine  Pottery."  Perhaps 
the  egregious  gentlemen  who  have  laboured  to  spoil  what 
might  have  been  one  of  the  most  remarkable  collections  of 
an  ancient  civilisation  existing  will  be  surprised  to  hear  that 
they  have  got  forged  pottery  in  the  genuine  case  and  vice 
versa.  A  typical  catalogue  entry  is  "  279.  Fragments  of  Toltec 
-column  " ;  or  "  281  to  283.  Three  stone  blocks.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  they  formed  part  of  gigantic  caryatides  "  ;  or 
"  286.  El  Indio  Triste.  Strange  human  sculpture  of  melancholy 
aspect "  ;  or  "  93.  Aztec  Goddess  Citlalinicue,  according  to  Senor 
Troncoso.  A  square  flat  stone  with  interesting  reliefs  on  its  two 
.chief  faces."     How  illuminating  to  be  sure  ! 

Heie  is  the  world-famous  Aztec  Calendar  Stone  found  in 
the  plaza  in  1790  during  some  levelling  operations,  and  the 
wonderfully  carved  Stone  of  Sacrifice,  also  unearthed  in  the 
plaza  a  year  later.  Here,  too,  is  the  much  debated  Chac  Mool 
statue  which  Dr.  Le  Plongeon,  of  whom  and  whose  work  we 
•shall  have  occasion  to  speak  later,  found  at  Chichen  Itza, 
Yucatan.  In  the  galleries  above  there  is  a  hotchpotch  of  ex-, 
hibits  ranging  from  a  dreadfully  poor  picture  of  the  Emperor 


MEXICO   CITY   AND   THE    MEXICANS  31 

"Maximilian's  footman,  the  hair  of  General  D.  Vicente  Guerrero 
^it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  world  has  long  ago  forgotten  that 
he  ever  lost  it),  a  "  Marble  Bath  Tub  made  of  a  single  block, 
said  to  have  belonged  to  the  Archduchess  Carlotta,  and  "  No. 
^3.  Wooden  Tub  made  of  one  piece,  presented  to  the  Arch- 
duchess by  Col.  Juan  B.  Campos,"  to  a  plaster  cast  of  "  the 
ideal  man  of  Neanderthal,"  specimens  of  human  skins  tattooed, 
Japanese  armour  and  two  human  bodies  naturally  mummi- 
fied. In  truth,  it  is  a  sorry  spectacle,  this  National  Museum 
of  Mexico,  and  you  wander  out  of  its  bewildering  galleries 
full  of  regret  at  the  reckless  way  in  which  a  great  chance  has 
been  thrown  away  ;  for  no  one  can  now  hope  to  put  right 
what  has  been  done  wrong  or  to  make  the  exhibition  a  good 
•one. 

The  electric  tram  service  of  the  city  is  excellent,  and  for 
a  few  centavos  you  are  transported  miles  into  the  many 
beautiful  suburbs  in  which  the  capital  rejoices.  Fairest  of 
these  is  Chapultepec  and  its  park,  where  on  a  Sunday  you 
can  sit  under  the  shade  of  giant  laurels  and  cypresses  and 
listen  to  the  really  excellent  music  of  the  band  of  the  Re- 
publican Guard  (the  Mexican  Life  Guards).  Chapultepec  is 
historic.  There  in  1847  ^^e  military  cadets  made  their  re- 
nowned stand  against  the  Americans,  a  glorious  piece  of 
fighting  which  is  memorialised  in  a  statue  group — the  names 
■of  the  fallen  lads  engraved  on  the  plinth.  The  castle — singu- 
larly un-castle-y — with  somewhat  the  appearance  of  a  glorified 
hydropathic,  stands  on  a  rock  about  150  feet  high  (Chapulte- 
pec means  "  hill  of  the  grasshopper"),  the  site  of  Moctezuma's 
summer  palace.  Beneath  it  lie  the  palace  grounds  intersected 
by  shady  drives  and  ornamental  waters  fringed  with  a  wealth 
of  flowering  shrubs.  From  the  height  you  get  an  unexampled 
view,  down  the  superb  drive  of  the  Paseo,  of  the  city  ringed 
round  with  volcanic  hills  purpled  with  a  sunny  mist.  To 
the  gate  of  the  park  an  endless  procession  of  trams  comes, 
filled  to  overflowing.  Sunday  is  Chapultepec's  great  day, 
and  all  the  sunny  afternoon  laughing,  gaily  dressed  crowds 
-file  through  the  paths  or  linger  round  the  bandstand  ;  while 
the  roadways  are  packed  with  slowly  moving  lines  of  wonder- 
ful carriages  drawn  by  really  fine  animals  ;  and  on  the 
•shady  unmacadamised  edges  of  the  carriageways  canter  as 
superb  a  collection  of  riding  horses  as  it  would  be  possible 
to  see  in  any  capital  outside  a  horse  show.  There  is  no 
animal  lovelier  than  a  well-bred  horse,  and  though  the  Mexican 


32  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

steeds  are  small,  they  are — at  least  the  bulk  of  them  in  Chapul- 
tepec  are — much  Arabised  and  magnificent  creatures.  The 
brilliant  gloss  of  their  skins,  the  clear,  soft  shining  eyes, 
the  rhythmic  power  and  grace  of  their  Hmbs,  the  dainty 
perfection  of  their  movements,  made  the  human  crowds 
around  them  look  quite  mean,  even  in  their  picturesque 
rainbow-hued  clothes,  for  sartorial  man  is  at  best  a  sloven. 
As  we  gazed  on  those  proud  heads  and  silky  manes,  and 
watched  the  play  of  the  muscles  beneath  the  satin  coats,  we 
felt  the  irony  of  that  human  phrase  "  the  lower  animals." 

Northward  from  the  Castle  the  country  breaks  into  sunny 
uplands  bordered  ten  miles  off  by  majestic  masses  of  igneous 
rock,  scarred  and  grey  here,  there  green  with  sprawling  cactus 
undergrowth  and  stimted  tree.  Long  stretches  of  pampas 
grass,  traversed  by  dusty  roads,  dispute  possession  of  this 
suburban  pleasaunce  with  plantations  of  maguey — vistas  of 
dark,  serried  green  broken  here  and  there  by  a  stone-built 
hacienda,  a  distant  patch  of  dazzling  white  in  the  sun's  glare, 
ringed  in  with  laurels  and  evergreen  oaks.  It  is  a  pretty 
picture,  and  you  forgive  the  clouds  of  dust,  which  rise  at  the 
hoofs  of  that  file  of  pulque  mules  and  which  envelop  that 
herd  of  white  goats  shepherded  by  barefoot  Indian  lassies, 
for  the  wealth  of  sunlight  which  enriches  the  landscape. 
Under  the  deep  shade  of  a  hacienda  portico  a  withered  Indian 
woman  squats  Turk-fashion  before  baskets  of  luscious  oranges. 
They  are  four  a  penny,  these  "  golden  apples,"  and  with 
armfuls  you  perch  yoinrself  on  the  stone  culvert  of  the  little 
bridge  spanning  the  brook,  once  a  mountain  torrent  on  those 
far-off  hills,  which  gently  murmurs  through  the  maguey 
gardens,  and  lunch  hke  gods  for  fourpence. 

Burke  could  not  "  find  it  in  his  heart  to  impeach  a 
nation,"  but  one  is  sorely  tempted  to  forget  his  advice 
in  writing  of  the  Mexicans.  As  a  people  they  are  disagree- 
able. They  are  fulsomely  polite,  but  it  is  just  that  lip-service 
which  sets  the  Englishman's  back  up.  In  his  inimitable 
verse  Kiphng  has  pointed  out  how  pohteness  "  takes  "  the 
Enghsh. 

Cock  the  gun  that  is  not  loaded. 

Cook  the  frozen  dynamite, 

But  oh  !    beware  my  people,  when  my  people  grow  polite. 

It  is  quite  true.  The  Enghshman  saves  his  politeness 
for  his  enemies.     The  Mexicans  are  polite  all  the  time,  but 


MEXICO    CITY   AND   THE    MEXICANS  33 

beneath  the  veneer  of  this  nauseating  oleaginous  manner  it 
takes  no  shrewd  observer  to  see  that  as  a  people  they  are 
possessed  of  the  most  unpleasant  characteristics.  They  are 
immense  procrastinators.  The  cry  of  the  country  is  mahana 
(to-morrow)  and  manana  never  comes,  if  they  can  help  it. 
Our  visit  to  the  capital  had  as  its  object  the  obtaining  of 
simple  passports  for  the  exploration  of  North-eastern  Yucatan. 
Yet,  though  the  British  Minister  very  kindly  interested  him- 
self in  our  tour  and  saw  the  President  on  the  matter,  it 
took  eight  days  for  us  to  get  these  simple  documents.  Every 
morning  we  had  to  waste  hours  at  the  Ministry  of  Public 
Instruction  badgering  the  Under-Secretary  of  State  to  carry 
out  the  very  instructions  which  we  ourselves  had  heard  given 
him  days  before  by  his  chief.  The  circumlocution  methods 
of  our  War  Office  have  deservedly  become  a  byword,  but 
the  amiable  gentlemen  who,  like  the  fountains  in  Trafalgar 
Square,  "  play  from  ten  till  four  "  in  Whitehall,  are  veritable 
miniature  Roosevelts  in  strenuosity  compared  with  Mexican 
officials.  A  typical  instance  of  their  methods  was  witnessed 
by  us.  We  were  waiting  in  the  anteroom  for  our  turn  to 
see  His  Excellency  the  Minister  when  the  Under-Secretary 
hurried  out  to  inquire  as  to  a  letter  sent  to  the  department 
but  which  had  never  reached  the  Minister.  A  distinguished 
elderly  official,  seated  at  a  massive  desk,  was  engaged  in 
smoking  a  cigarette  and  meditating  on  the  Infinite  between 
the  puffs.  He  seemed  quite  pained  when  the  Under-Secretary 
suggested  he  had  forgotten  anything.  He  had  forgotten 
such  a  lot  in  his  life  that  he  felt  he  had  a  right  to  complain 
that  such  a  trifle  as  a  mislaid  letter  should  be  allowed 
to  break  the  even  tenor  of  his  official  hours.  The  Under- 
Secretary  returned  to  his  room,  and  the  distinguished  official 
(his  conscience  was  evidently  gnawing)  looked  suspiciously 
round  and,  believing  we  did  not  see,  opened  a  drawer  of  his 
desk,  out  of  which  he  took  a  bundle  of  unopened  letters  which 
appeared  to  represent  the  official  mail  of  the  department 
for  the  past  fortnight.  With  an  ivory  paper-knife  he  ripped 
open  one  after  the  other,  recklessly  throwing  them  back 
unread  into  his  drawer  imtil  he  found  the  one  he  sought, 
when  he  bundled  back  the  remainder  unopened,  and  with  a 
radiant  expression  of  pleased  surprise,  as  of  a  man  who  had 
made  an  entirely  unforeseen  discovery,  he  hastened  into  the 
Under-Secretary's  room.  The  philosophic  calm  with  which 
he  lit  a  fresh  cigarette,  on  his  return,  and  sank  once  more 


34  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

into  his  padded  chair,  suggested  that  he  had  satisfied  his 
superior,  perhaps  even  himself,  that  the  blame  rested  with 
one  of  those  rascally  clerks  who  were  engaged  at  the  time 
in  a  vigorous  conversation  on  nothing  in  particular  in  the 
courtyard. 

Until  1876,  when  upon  his  distracted  country  Porfirio 
Diaz,  innkeeper's  son  and  born  ruler,  descended  as  deus 
ex  machina,  the  state  of  Mexico  may  be  summed  up  in  the 
words  "rapine,  murder,  and  sudden  death."  But  though 
Mexico  has  had — and  the  bulk  of  her  population  has  had 
reason  during  the  past  thirty  years  to  thank  her  lucky  stars 
for  him — an  "  Iron  Master,"  the  quietude  of  the  country  is 
only  skin-deep.  Law  and  order  is  represented  by  a  blend 
of  a  rough-and-ready  justice,  a  sort  of  legalised  lynch-law, 
with  an  official  law-administration  venal  to  a  high  degree. 
With  every  second  mestizo  a  bom  robber,  Mexico  is  no 
place  for  tedious  processes  with  remands  and  committals 
to  Assizes.  A  man  caught  red-handed  is  usually  dealt  with 
on  the  spot.  Such  a  case  occurred  while  we  were  visiting 
the  capital.  Two  days  after  we  had  travelled  on  the  mar- 
vellous mountain  railway,  the  guards  of  the  day-train  (which 
by  the  way  always  takes  the  bullion  to  the  coast  and  has 
a  carriage-load  of  soldiers  attached  as  military  convoy)  saw, 
as  they  approached  the  steepest  descent,  two  fellows  loitering 
on  the  line,  presumably  wreckers.  The  train  was  stopped 
and  the  guards  and  the  officer  commanding  the  convoy  gave 
chase,  and,  coming  up  with  the  men,  shot  them  with  their 
revolvers  and  kicked  the  bodies  down  the  precipice.  The 
sun  and  the  vultures  do  the  rest,  and  on  the  re-arrival  of  the 
train  in  the  capital  the  matter  may  or  may  not  be  formally 
notified  to  the  Government. 

Even  to  the  casual  observer  the  difficulty  of  governing 
Mexico  must  seem  inexpressibly  great.  President  Diaz 
has  succeeded  not  so  much  because  he  does  not  know  what 
mercy  means  or  because  a  rifle  bullet  is  his  only  answer  for 
those  who  question  his  authority,  but  because  he  is  endowed 
with  superhuman  tact.  The  iron  heel,  like  that  of  Achilles, 
has  its  vulnerable  spot  if  pressed  too  hard  upon  a  people's 
throat,  and  so  he  has  little  dodges  by  which  he  appears  to  his 
subjects  to  exercise  a  judicious  clemency.  If  some  redoubt- 
able criminal  is  captured,  some  monarch  of  murderers,  Diaz 
knows  well  that  among  his  thousands  of  crime-loving  fellow- 
countrymen  the  brute  wiU  have  a  large  following.     His  exe- 


MEXICO    CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  35 

cution  will  mean  the  declaration  of  a  vendetta  against  the 
police.  So  he  is  put  on  his  trial,  condemned  to  death,  and 
within  twenty-four  hours  the  President  commutes  his  sen- 
tence to  one  of  twenty  years'  incarceration  in  the  Penitentiary. 
After  about  a  week  there,  he  is  taken  out  one  evening,  as 
usual,  into  the  prison  yard  for  exercise  under  a  small  guard 
of  soldiers.  One  of  these  sidles  up  to  him  and  suggests  that 
as  the  night  is  dark  he  might  make  a  bolt  for  it.  The  convict 
believes  it  a  genuine  offer,  sprints  off,  and  is  dropped  at  thirty 
yards  like  a  rabbit  by  the  five  or  six  soldiers  who  have  been 
waiting  under  the  shadow  of  the  further  wall.  The  next 
morning  the  official  newspaper  states,"  Last  night  the  notorious 
criminal  So  and  So,  to  whom  His  Excellency  the  President 
recently  extended  clemency,  made  an  attempt  to  escape 
while  being  exercised  in  the  prison  yard,  and  was  shot  dead  by 
the  sentries."  Thus  everybody  is  pleased,  except  possibly 
the  convict,  and  the  President,  without  the  least  odium  to 
himself,  has  rid  the  country  of  another  blackguard. 

Another  stroke  of  real  genius  was  the  way  in  which  he 
has  succeeded  in  setting  thieves  to  catch  thieves.  When 
he  became  President,  the  coimtry  was  infested  with  bandits 
who  stopped  at  nothing ;  but  Diaz  erected  huge  gallows  at 
the  crossways  all  over  Mexico,  and  the  robbers  found  they 
had  to  stop  at  those,  and  stop  quite  a  long  while  till  the  zopi- 
lotes  and  vultures  had  picked  their  bones  to  the  blameless 
white  to  which  good  Porfirio  Diaz  desired  the  lives  of  all  his 
subjects  to  attain.  After  some  weeks  of  brisk  hanging- 
business,  Diaz  played  his  trump  card.  He  proclaimed  that 
all  other  bandits,  known  or  unknown,  who  cared  to  surrender 
would  be  enrolled  as  rurales,  country  poUce,  and,  garbed  in 
State  uniform  and  armed  with  Winchesters,  would  spend  the 
remainder  of  their  lives  agreeably  engaged  in  killing  their 
recalcitrant  comrades.  This  temptation  to  spend  their  de- 
clining days  in  bloodshed,  to  which  no  penalties  were  attached, 
was  too  much  for  many.  Thus  fifty  per  cent,  of  Mexico's 
robbers  turn  pohce  and  murder  the  other  fifty,  and  acute 
Diaz  has  a  body  of  men  who  and  whose  sons  have  proved, 
and  sons'  sons  will  prove,  the  eternal  wisdom  of  this  hybrid 
Sphinx  of  a  ruler. 

But  there  is  a  comic  side  to  Mexican  justice.  There  is 
a  Gilbertian  humour  in  the  go-as-you-please  style  in  which 
prisoners  are  treated.  In  one  crowded  court,  when  the  jury 
had  retired  to  consider  their  verdict  the  prisoner  was  engaged 


36  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

in  walking  up  and  down,  hands  in  pockets,  cigarette  in 
mouth,  while  the  poHce,  entirely  oblivious  to  their  charge, 
smoked  and  chatted  in  another  part  of  the  court.  We  asked 
one  officer  whether  they  were  not  afraid  of  the  prisoner  at- 
tempting an  escape ;  "  Oh  no,"  he  said,  "  he'll  wait  for  the 
verdict."  Roadmaking  is  practically  always  done  by  gangs 
of  convicts,  and,  when  they  think  they  have  had  enough 
work,  they  throw  down  their  spades  and  picks,  and  warders 
and  everybody  sit  down  on  the  roadside  and  enjoy  a 
cigarette  and  a  chat.  The  British  Minister  told  us  that  he 
had  recently  been  shown  over  the  Penitentiary,  in  which  at 
the  moment  there  was  a  bloodthirsty  rascal  whose  record  of 
crime  would  have  shamed  a  Jack  the  Ripper.  The  governor 
of  the  gaol  entered  into  a  long  and  friendly  conversation 
with  him  as  to  his  wife  and  family,  and,  as  the  British 
Minister  humorously  put  it,  "  We  were  all  but  presented 
to  him." 

The  daily  life  of  the  Mexicans  begins  before  dawn,  when 
they  all  get  up,  apparently  because  it  is  a  habit  of  which 
they  cannot  break  themselves,  for  they  seem  to  have  no- 
thing to  do  except  to  crouch  round  swaddled  up  in  blankets 
and  complain  that  it  is  "  mucho  frio."  As  soon  as  six  o'clock 
and  daylight  come  they  take  their  coffee  and  roll.  Most 
Mexicans  are  heavy  eaters,  but  they  reserve  their  gastronomic 
heroisms  for  a  later  hour.  Many,  like  the  Arabs,  have  but 
one  big  meal  a  day,  shortly  after  noon,  when  they  do  eat  ;  so 
heavily  indeed  that  the  rest  of  their  day  is  spent,  boa-con- 
strictor fashion,  sleeping  off  the  gorge.  Many  others  eat 
at  10.30  and  5  o'clock.  The  cooking  is  Spanish,  only  a  httle 
bit  more  so.  Their  favourite  dishes  are  appalling  stews, 
the  greasy  garlicyness  of  which  would  frighten  away  the 
appetite  of  an  English  schoolboy.  One  of  the  most  popular 
is  morli,  the  basis  of  which  is  said  to  be  turkey,  but  it  is  very 
cleverly  disguised.  Of  course,  in  the  capital,  foreign  invasion 
has  much  modified  the  national  fare,  but  the  bulk  of  the 
Mexican  people  live  to-day,  as  they  have  for  centuries  past, 
on  black  beans  (frijoles),  tortillas  (flat  cakes  of  half-baked 
maize,  first  soaked  and  crushed) ,  coffee  without  milk,  red  and 
green  peppers,  a  little  pork,  and  occasionally  a  piece  of  very 
stringy  beef.  The  wealthy  Mexicans  never  entertain  in  our 
sense,  even  among  themselves.  Such  a  thing  as  a  dinner 
party  is  unheard  of  in  non-official  circles.  This  is  probably 
due  largely  to  their  taste    for    secluding  their    womenfolk, 


MEXICO    CITY   AND   THE    MEXICANS  37 

though  it  is  not  unfair  to  say  that  it  is  contributed  to  by 
their  disinclination  for  hospitahty. 

The  above  remarks  refer  to  the  Mexicans,  not  to  the  Indians, 
who,  as  far  as  they  can,  Uve  the  lives  their  ancestors  lived 
four  centuries  back,  mingling  but  not  mixing  with  their  half- 
bred  Spanish  masters.  The  Mexican  Indians  are  probably 
among  the  dirtiest  people  on  God's  earth,  with  possibly  an 
exception  in  favour  of  the  Yahgans  of  Tierra  del  Fuego,  the 
Eskimos,  and  thirty  years  ago  in  favour  of  the  now  extinct 
Tasmanians.  But  the  average  Mexican,  too,  has  the  Spanish 
horror  of  water,  and  though  he  will  keep  up  appearances 
like  a  schoolboy  who  washes  down  to  where  his  Eton  collar 
comes,  he  wiU  shirk  more  serious  ablutions  whenever  possible. 
The  profuse  use  of  scents,  especially  among  men,  is  always  a 
suspicious  sign,  and  this  is  not  lacking  in  Mexico.  The  dis- 
regard of  the  people  for  bodily  cleanliness  is  only  matched 
by  their  contempt  for  those  elaborate  sanitary  arrangements 
which  in  most  European  countries  have  done  so  much  to 
make  it  possible  for  us  miserable  mortals  to  forget  the  humili- 
ating physical  necessities  of  our  daily  lives.  Throughout 
the  capital  there  are  no  pubUc  conveniences.  An  indignant 
apologist  for  Mexico  declared  to  us  on  the  steamer  coming 
home  that  urinals  did  exist  in  the  plaza  near  the  cathedral. 
All  we  can  say  is  that  we  did  not  see  them.  An  English 
friend  of  ours,  far  from  his  hotel  and  in  temporary  distress, 
approached  a  passing  Mexican  seiior  with  the  question,  "  Donde 
es  el  escusado  ?  "  To  his  dismay  he  was  told  that  there  was 
no  such  place,  but  was  courteously  invited  to  the  stranger's 
house,  in  the  course  of  his  visit  passing  through  the  sitting- 
room,  where  the  wife  and  young  daughters  sat  at  needlework. 
All  over  the  city  are  the  drinking-shops  (pulquerias)  where 
the  beloved  pulque  is  served  all  day  to  a  jostling,  elbowing 
crowd  of  tight-trousered  and  bespurred  vaqueros  (cowboys) 
and  of  the  Mexican-cum-Indian  city  riff-raff  who  stand  round 
the  filthy  counters.  The  floor  is  usually  earth,  and  the  comers 
of  the  shop  are  used  by  the  customers  to  relieve  themselves, 
without  a  murmur  from  the  publican  or  the  slightest  protest 
from  any  one. 

Nominally  Mexico  is  a  Republic  :  really  she  is  nothing  of 
the  sort.  There  is  a  Senate,  a  Chamber  of  Deputies,  periodic 
elections  of  State  representatives,  a  Governor  and  Council 
in  each  State  of  the  Federation  ;  but  for  upwards  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century  these  have  all  been  but  pawns  on  a  chessboard — 


38  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  player  a  man  of  such  astounding  nature  that  those  who 
laughed  at  Mrs.  Alec  Tweedie's  description  of  him  as  "  the 
greatest  man  of  the  nineteenth  century  "  laughed  from  the  full- 
ness of  their  ignorance.  Porfirio  Diaz  is  an  autocrat.  He  is  an 
autocrat  fiercer,  more  rfelentless,  more  absolute  than  the  Tsar 
of  Russia,  than  any  recent  Tsar  has  been,  almost  than  Peter 
the  Great  himself.  He  is  more  :  he  is  a  bom  ruler.  He  has 
played  for  the  regeneration  of  his  country.  He  has  played, 
but  it  is  too  much  to  say  he  has  won.  Nobody  could  win  ; 
but. he  has  chained  the  bloody  dogs  of  anarchy  and  murder, 
chained  them  successfully  for  so  many  years  that  there  are 
some  who  forget  that  he  has  not  killed  them  outright.  Diaz 
is  literally  living  over  a  volcano  :  he  is  a  personified  extin- 
guisher of  the  fierce  furnace  of  his  country's  turbulence.  But 
when  death  removes  him,  what  then  ?  The  deluge,  surely ; 
and  after  that  one  more  apotheosis  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
and  the  very  wholesome,  if  somewhat  aggressive,  Stars  and 
Stripes.  You  must  go  to  Mexico  and  live  among  its  people  to 
know  all  this.  It  is  singular  how  little  the  English  people 
know  of  the  country.  Only  the  other  day  a  veteran  Anglo- 
Indian  officer  gravely  asked  us,  "  What  is  the  exact  position 
of  Mexico  in  the  United  States  of  America  ?  "  We  simply 
gasped  :  words  failed  in  such  an  emergency.  Before  Diaz 
came,  Mexico's  history  was  one  of  uninterrupted  rapine,  murder, 
and  sudden  death.  Out  of  a  morass  of  blood  he  has  made 
a  garden  :  out  of  robbers  he  has  made  citizens  :  out  of  bank- 
ruptcy he  has  made  a  revenue  :  out  of  the  bitterest  civil 
strivings  he  has  almost  made  a  nation. 

He  is  nearly  eighty  :  he  is  as  upright  as  a  dart :  he  has 
the  face  of  a  sphinx  with  a  jaw  which  makes  you  shudder. 
He  rarely  talks,  he  still  more  rarely  smiles.  And  yet  the 
whole  man  expresses  no  false  pride — no  "  wind  in  the  head." 
His  icy  superhumanly  self-controlled  nature  is  too  great  to 
be  moved  by  such  petty  things  as  pride  and  a  vulgar  joy  in 
power.  In  manner  and  in  hfe  he  is  simplicity  itself.  He 
rides  unattended  in  the  Paseo  :  he  comes  down  to  the  Jockey 
Club  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  members  just  rise  and  bow,  and 
the  President  picks  up  his  paper  and  sits  quietly  at  the  window 
reading.  He  dishkes  all  ostentation  :  his  food  is  simple  : 
his  clothes  are  almost  always  a  plain  blue  serge  suit  and  dark 
tie  :  and  in  his  winter  home  in  the  city  he  lives  as  a  simple 
citizen.  But  his  power  is  literally  Umitless.  The  Mexicans 
do  not  love  him  :  nobody  could  love  such  a  man.     The  lower 


MEXICO   CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  39 

classes  fear  him  unreasoningly  ;  the  upper  classes  fear  him 
too,  but  it  is  blended  with  a  lively  sense  of  what  he  means 
to  Mexico.  But  mark  you  !  there  is  nothing  of  the  bully 
about  him.  The  bully  is  always  weak,  a  coward.  If  Diaz 
was  arrogant,  he  would  be  assassinated  in  twenty-four  hours. 
He  knows  that.  He  knows  the  blood  of  the  cattle  he  drives. 
Nobody  but  a  madman  whips  a  blood  horse  ;  but  he  must 
have  an  iron  wrist  and  a  good  hold  on  the  rein.  And  that  is 
why  one  can  safely  describe  Diaz  as  a  bom  ruler.  He  in- 
stinctively understands  his  subjects  :  he  has  not  learnt  it, 
for  he  began  thirty  years  ago.  He  was  never  educated  in 
statecraft,  for  indeed  he  had  no  education  at  all ;  he  was  merely 
the  son  of  an  innkeeper,  first  sent  to  a  Jesuit  seminary,  whence 
he  ran  away  and  joined  the  army.  No  !  the  man's  secret 
is  an  iron  wiU  and  positively  miraculous  tact.  Whatever  he 
does,  whatever  he  orders,  is  always  done  so  nicely.  Everybody 
knows  it  has  got  to  be  done.  Nobody  ever  crossed  Diaz  and 
hved  to  boast  of  so  doing.  But  he  gilds  the  piUs  he  thinks 
his  people  must  swallow,  and  they  gulp  them  down  and  look 
up  with  meek  smiles  into  that  awful  face. 

Here  is  a  httle  characteristic  story  of  him.  Some  while 
back  there  was  an  election  of  Governor  of  Yucatan.  The 
Yucatecan  people  have  always  been  one  of  the  most  restive 
of  the  presidential  team.  They  nominated  a  man  disagree- 
able to  Diaz  ;  he  nominated  a  second.  The  election  ballot 
took  place.  The  Yucatecan  nominee  was  successful  by  an 
enormous  majority.  The  news  is  wired  to  Mexico  City.  Back 
comes  the  presidential  answer:  "  Glad  to  know  my  man  elected : 
am  sending  troops  to  formally  inaugurate  him."  The  troops 
came,  and  Diaz's  man  was  formally  installed.  To  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies  no  one  can  be  elected  against  the  President's  wish. 
For  the  over-popular  Governor  of  a  State  Diaz  provides  dis- 
tinguished employment  elsewhere.  Such  a  case  occurred 
whUe  we  were  in  Yucatan.  Senor  Olegario  Molina,  of  whom 
we  shaU  later  speak  more,  has  been  for  some  years  deservedly 
popular  in  Merida,  for  he  has  done  much  to  improve  it.  Pre- 
sident Diaz  visited  Merida  recently,  and  on  his  return  ap- 
pointed Senor  Molina  a  Cabinet  Minister.  When  he  arrived 
in  Vera  Cruz  MoUna  foimd  the  presidential  train  awaiting 
him,  and  on  reaching  Mexico  City  the  President  and  the  whole 
Cabinet  had  come  to  the  station  to  greet  him,  and  drove  him 
triumphantly  to  the  Itiurbide  Hotel.  Charming  courtesies  ! 
how  favourably  the  presidential  eyes  beam  on  him  !     Yes, 


40  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

but  he  is  banished :  as  much  banished  as  the  shivering  pauper 
Jew  workman  turned  away  from  the  London  Docks.  He 
was  too  powerful :  he  is  safer  in  Mexico  City,  far  away  from 
the  madding  crowds  who  would  perchance  have  made  him 
State  dictator.  A  too  popular  Cabinet  Minister,  again,  is  sent 
as  Minister  to  Madrid  :  another  is  found  essential  to  the 
pacification  of  a  turbulent  State  of  Northern  Mexico  ;  and  so 
the  pretty  game  goes  on,  and  there  is  literally  no  kicking 
amongst  the  presidential  team. 

But  there  are  fiercer  exhibitions  of  autocracy  at  which 
people  only  hint,  or  of  which  they  speak  in  whispers.  There 
is  no  Siberia  in  Mexico,  but  there  are  the  equivalents  of  banish- 
ment and  disappearance  for  those  who  would  challenge  the 
authority  of  the  Mexican  Tsar.  Even  criticism  is  tyrannically 
repressed.  There  is  a  Press,  but  the  muzzling  order  has  long 
been  in  force,  and  recalcitrant  editors  soon  see  the  inside 
of  the  Penitentiary.  General  Diaz's  present  (second)  wife 
is  a  daughter  of  a  prominent  supporter  of  Lerdo  de  Tejada, 
who  on  the  death  of  Juarez  assumed  the  presidency,  but 
was  expelled  in  1876  by  Diaz.  The  alliance  brought  about 
an  armed  peace  between  the  two  men.  But  they  tell  this 
story.  One  day  an  argument  arose,  and  hot  words  followed. 
It  was  at  a  meal ;  and  when  wine's  in,  wit's  out.  Diaz's  father- 
in-law  went  far,  and  half  in  jest  half  in  earnest  said,  "  Why, 
Porfirio,  you  almost  tempt  me  to  turn  rebel  again."  They  all 
saw  the  President's  face  darken,  but  the  storm  blew  over. 
That  night  it  is  said  that  Madame  Diaz  had  to  go  on  to  her 
knees  to  her  husband  to  beg  for  her  father's  life. 

Such  is  the  arbiter  and  autocrat  of  Mexico.  What,  then, 
is  the  state  of  the  country  politically,  and  what  will  be  her 
future  ?  Mexico's  great  weakness  (she  has  many,  but  this  over- 
tops all  others,  and  lowers  menacing  on  her  political  horizon) 
is  that  she  is  not  a  nation.  There  is  no  true  national  feeling, 
and  a  moment's  thought  will  show  that  the  circumstances 
of  her  population  forbid  the  existence  of  such.  On  the  one 
side  you  have  the  Spanish  Mexicans,  the  white  population, 
representing  the  purest  European  blood  in  the  country.  They 
are  but  some  19  per  cent,  of  a  population  of  twelve  million 
odd.  Among  them,  and  among  them  alone,  is  patriotism 
in  its  highest  sense  to  be  expected  or  found.  On  the  other 
side  you  have  the  vast  mestizo  class — the  half-castes — some 
43  per  cent.,  and  then  the  purer  Indians,  forming  the  re- 
maining 38  per  cent.     Of  these  three  classes  the  character- 


MEXICO    CITY   AND   THE    MEXICANS  41 

istics  are  sufficiently  marked  to  destroy  hope  of  any  welding 
or  holding  together.  The  Spanish  Mexicans  are  sensual  and 
apathetic,  avaricious  and  yet  indolent,  inheriting  a  full  share 
of  that  Castilian  pride  and  bigotry  which  has  worked  the 
colonial  ruin  of  Spain.  Brave,  with  many  of  those  time- 
honoured  traits  of  the  proverbial  Spanish  don,  they  are  yet 
a  people  inexorably  "  marked  down  "  by  Fate  in  the  inter- 
national remnant  basket.  They  have  had  their  day.  Ye 
Gods  !  they  have  used  it,  too  ;  but  it  is  gone.  The  mestizos 
— near  half  the  population — have  all  the  worst  features  of  their 
Spanish  and  Indian  parents.  Turbulent,  bom  criminals, 
treacherous,  idle,  dissolute,  and  cruel,  they  have  the  Spanish 
lust  and  the  Indian  natural  cynicism,  the  Spanish  luxury  of 
temperament  with  the  Indian  improvidence.  These  are  the 
true  Mexicans  ;  these  are  the  unruled  and  unrulable  hotchpotch 
whom  Diaz's  iron  hand  holds  straining  in  the  leash  :  the  dogs 
of  rapine,  murder,  and  sudden  death,  whose  cowardice  is  only 
matched  by  their  vicious  treachery.  And  last  there  are  the 
Indians,  heartless,  hopeless,  disinherited,  enslaved,  awaiting 
with  sullen  patience  their  dehverance  from  the  hated  yoke 
of  their  Spanish  masters,  not  a  whit  less  abhorrent  to  them 
because  they  have  had  four  centuries  in  which  to  become 
accustomed  to  it.  The  heterogeneity  of  Mexico's  population 
is  only  matched  by  the  depth  of  the  antagonism  of  each  class 
to  each  in  aU  their  most  vital  interests.  To  a  common  enemy 
Mexico  can  never  present  an  undivided  front.  Indeed  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  she  can  never  have  a  common  enemy  ; 
and  whencesoever  the  bolt  comes  it  will  find  Mexico  unpre- 
pared, a  land  of  ethnic  shreds  and  patches,  slattern  in  her 
policy,  slattern  in  her  defence,  her  vitals  preyed  upon  by  the 
vultures  of  civil  strife.  Of  all  lands  she  might  best  afford  a 
realistic  presentment  of  the  sad  tale  of  the  Kilkenny  cats. 

The  potential  wealth  of  Mexico  is  almost  limitless,  but 
the  indolence  of  the  Mexican  nature  is  inimical  to  its  develop- 
ment. Under  the  iron  rule  of  Diaz  the  country  has  advanced, 
it  is  undeniable,  in  every  direction.  Railway  enterprise  has 
opened  up  unheard-of  possibihties  in  outlying  States  ;  bank- 
ing, though  still  crude  (the  bank  rate  is  about  9  per  cent.),  is 
becoming  a  feature  of  Mexican  commerce  ;  municipal  life 
is  assmning  that  beneficent  tendency  which  it  has  for  years 
possessed  in  most  European  countries  ;  drainage  and  sanitation 
are  receiving  official  attention,  and  the  welfare  of  the  people 
is  a  plank,  and  a  big  one,  in  the  present  poUcy.     Last  but  not 


42  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

least,  the  educational  tonic  in  doses  for  an  adult,  perhaps  too 
strong,  is  being  given  to  a  moribund  people  under  the  super- 
vision of  an  excellent  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  Seiior 
Justo  Sierra.  But  bulk  largely  as  this  programme  of  progress 
does,  it  is  due  to  one  fact  and  one  alone — the  supreme  wisdom 
of  the  President  in  welcoming  the  foreigner  and  his  capital. 
Behind  all  the  great  schemes  of  improvement  one  finds  the 
foreigner.  The  excellent  tram  service  of  the  metropolis  was 
until  recently  practically  owned  by  the  late  Mr.  Alfred  Beit 
and  his  firm  ;  railroads  are  English  or  American  built  and 
owned  ;  new  towns  such  as  Coatzocoalcos  are  creations  of  such 
mechanical  geniuses  as  Sir  Weetman  Pearson.  And  this 
brings  us  to  Mexico's  second  great  danger,  which  must  in- 
evitably shape  her  future.  She  may  be  said  to  be  largely  in 
the  hands  of  mortgagees.  Of  these  the  chief  three  are  England, 
America,  and  Germany ;  and  their  mutual  positions  are 
pregnant  with  prophecy  of  what  must  come.  The  Germans 
have  wrested  from  their  rivals  much  of  the  trade ;  especially 
have  they  worsted  the  French  retailers.  But  Germany  has 
probably  lent  Mexico  the  last  mark  she  will  ever  get.  The 
English  are  chiefly  centred  on  the  mining  interests,  and 
sporadically  in  land  and  agriculture,  and  though  the  Mexican 
Government  would  eagerly  welcome  large  English  loans,  it 
is  doubtful,  very  doubtful,  if  they  will  be  forthcoming.  But 
American  capital  is  rolling  in,  rolling  in  like  an  inexorable 
tide  of  Fate.  You  have  only  to  be  in  Mexico  a  day  or  two 
to  realise  how  irresistibly  the  country  is  sinking  into  the  power 
of  the  American  investor,  and  how  vain — and  the  more  vicious 
because  of  their  vanity — are  the  efforts  of  Mexicans  to  avoid 
looking  upon  the  Gorgon  head  of  Yankee  hustle  which  is  des- 
tined to  turn  their  somnolent  national  life,  such  as  it  is,  into 
stone.  If  in  Mexico  City  you  say  you  are  an  American,  you 
soon  find  you  represent  a  race  which  is  hated  as  much  as  it 
is  dreaded.  English,  French,  Germans  are  all  welcome,  but 
Americans  !  .  .  .  Mexico  has  more  than  a  cloud  on  her 
horizon.  She  has  Texas  and  Arizona  to  remind  her  perpetually 
of  her  fate.  Never  did  spendthrift  heir  struggle  more  un- 
availingly  in  the  hands  of  Jews  than  does  Mexico  in  the  hands 
of  her  great  neighbour. 

Cassandra-Uke,  we  will  prophesy  unto  you.  Let  us  not 
be  rash  and  attempt  to  fix  dates  ;  but  as  certainly  as  day 
succeeds  night,  Mexico  will  eventually  form  a  part  of  the 
United  States.     It  will  probably  be  sooner  than  is  anticipated 


MEXICO   CITY   AND   THE   MEXICANS  43 

even  by  the  clearest-headed  men  on  both  sides  of  the  Texan 
frontier.  With  the  death  of  General  Diaz,  Mexico  wiU  be 
plunged  into  Kilkenny  strife.  Nothing  can  save  her.  The 
North  will  go  like  a  field  of  sundried  barley,  fired  in  a  gale  of 
wind  :  the  turbulent  North,  where  even  now  a  life  is  worth 
nothing.  Some  Englishmen  found  a  rich  claim  recently,  and 
sat  down  to  work  it.  Presently  warning  came,  "  You  had 
better  clear.  The  Mexican  miners  are  going  to  '  do  you  in.'  " 
Well,  the  English  went,  and  by  a  circuitous  road,  and  it  was 
a  good  thing  for  them  that  they  did,  for  a  gang  of  "  civilised  " 
Mexicans  were  waiting  for  them  on  the  ordinary  road,  deter- 
mined to  knife  them,  not  content  with  kicking  them  out  of 
their  claim.  That's  the  North  to-day,  and  the  fear  of  Diaz's 
name  just  keeps  the  pot  from  boiling  over  ;  but  it's  on  the 
boil,  right  enough.  Well  then,  the  North  will  go  into  open 
rebellion,  and  the  situation  will  be  complicated  by  a  rising 
of  the  Indians,  who  will  be  against  everybody  else.  Mexico 
in  her  present  isolated  independent  condition  needs  a  soldier 
ruler.  Your  Corrals  and  Limantours,  your  Marischals  and 
Sierras  are  good  enough  as  Cabinet  Ministers,  but  they  are 
not  the  men  for  the  awful  task  which  Porfirio  Diaz  set  himself 
thirty  years  back  and  has  brought  to  temporary  perfection. 
Those  who  know  Mexico  best  know  there  is  no  successor  to 
Diaz.  The  very  installation  of  a  new  President  will  only  add 
fury  to  the  internecine  strife. 

But  Mexico  cannot  boil  her  pot  as  she  likes.  Other  nations 
have  helped  her  with  too  many  condiments  and  too  much 
stock.  American  troops  will  cross  the  frontier  to  protect 
American  interests  and  capital ;  and  when  they  are  once  in 
they  will  stop  there,  as  the  Enghsh  have  in  Egypt.  It  will 
be  a  Protectorate,  the  maintenance  of  which  will  prove  in  the 
best  interests  of  England,  Germany,  and  every  other  Power 
concerned.  America  is  inevitably  marked  out  as  the  dea 
ex  machind  when  the  social  earthquake  in  Mexico  comes  about. 
A  few  years,  a  few  struggles,  a  bloody  civil  war,  a  rising  of  the 
miserable  Indian  slaves  in  all  the  States,  and  Mexico  will  vote 
herself  inside  the  federation  of  which,  despite  her  struggles, 
she  is  already  so  completely  a  geographical  part.  The  Mexi- 
cans have  a  httle  weakness  for  calling  their  land  South  America. 
Whatever  else  Mexico  is  she  is  not  South  America,  and  their 
eagerness  to  alter  stem  geographical  fact  only  underlines  the 
fear  which  is  in  their  hearts. 

When  one  remembers  that  by  the  Nicaraguan  Treaty  five 


44  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

miles  each  side  of  the  canal  are  definitely  annexed  by  the  United 
States  ;  when  one  looks  at  the  ridiculously  truncated  appear- 
ance of  the  land  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  on  the  Map  of  the 
World  ;  when  one  knows  enough  of  the  Mexicans  to  foresee 
what  must  happen  on  Diaz's  death  ;  when  one  tots  up  the 
vast  amount  of  American  wealth  which  is  at  stake  in  Mexico ; 
when  one  remembers  that  Mexico  is  without  military  or  naval 
resources  to  resist  foreign  interference  (her  army  of  twenty 
odd  thousand  is,  as  a  fighting  force,  a  negligible  quantity, 
and  her  navy  consists  of  three  old  gunboats  and  a  training 
ship)  ;  when  one  realises  that  her  difficulties  will  find  her 
with  an  empty  treasure  chest,  living  from  hand  to  mouth  on 
a  suicidal  policy  of  a  crushing  excise  system,  stifling  internal 
commerce  and  forcing  her  people  to  look  to  other  lands  for 
countless  manufactures  which  they  could  tackle  themselves ; 
when  one  sees  that  the  last,  the  greatest  resource  of  every 
country,  an  appeal  to  national  feeling,  will  be  lost  on  ears 
deaf  with  the  din  of  civil  bloodshed,  it  does  not  need  much 
acumen  to  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  Mexico  as  a  separate 
State  is  doomed  to  extinction,  and  that  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
will  float  over  all  America  to  the  Panama  Canal.  Yucatan 
(which  wished  to  cede  herself  with  Texas  in  1845),  Guatemala, 
Nicaragua,  they  must  all  go,  and  into  the  atrophying  veins 
of  these  dying  Latin  races  will  be  injected  the  honest  virile  hfe 
of  a  democracy  triumphant,  and  Mexico,  for  certain,  will  rise 
Phoenix-like  from  the  ashes  of  her  hybrid  Spanish  past. 


CHAPTER    III 

YUCATAN   AND   HER   HISTORY 

IT  has  ever  been  the  fate  of  Yucatan  to  be  misunderstood. 
Her  very  christening  was  the  result  of  a  misunderstand- 
ing. Accoimts  vary  as  to  the  exact  place  and  time,  and  as 
to  the  Mayan  words  used  ;  but  there  seems  little  doubt  that 
it  was  Cortes's  first  question  of  the  Indians  who  had  gathered 
on  the  beach  when  he  landed  in  151 7  that  settled  the  matter. 
He  naturally  asked  what  they  called  their  country,  and  they  as 
naturally,  not  understanding  a  single  syllable,  returned,  "Matan 
c  ubah  than,"  "  Tec  te  than,"  or  some  such  words  ("  We  do  not 
understand"),  which  were  promptly  taken  by  the  invaders  to 
be  the  country's  name  and  corrupted  into  "  Yucatan."  Bishop 
Landa,  in  his  Relacidn  de  las  Cosas  de  Yucatan  (1556),  credits 
Cordoba  with  the  christening,  and  says  the  incident  took  place 
at  Cape  Catoche,  varying  the  Indian  reply  as  "  Ci  u  than!  " 
meaning  "  How  well  they  speak  !  " 

But  fifteen  years  earlier  Christopher  Columbus  had  blun- 
dered worse,  for  he  had  declared  Yucatan  an  island,  and  the 
sight  of  a  richly  laden  canoe  had  persuaded  the  sanguine 
Spaniard  that  he  had  reached  Eldorado  at  last — hence  Yuca- 
tan's early  name  among  the  Spanish  of  "  Isla  Rica."  How 
bitterly  the  brave  Spanish  pioneers  paid  for  this  error,  laying 
down  their  lives  by  scores  to  win  a  country  which  was  all 
limestone  bluffs  and  dense  rank  forests,  will  be  outlined  directly 
in  the  brief  account  we  must  give  of  Monte  jo's  ill-fated  ex- 
peditions. Here  it  is  enough  to  say  that  as  soon  as  the  land's 
barrenness  was  known,  Spain's  great  captains  turned  their 
backs  on  it.  Thereafter  for  centuries  Yucatan  passed  through 
a  series  of  misunderstandings,  political  and  otherwise.  In 
her  tangled  woods  and  on  her  bare  sunbaked  limestone 
hills  Central  American  civilisation  had,  it  is  now  known, 
reached  its  apogee,  but  more  than  three  hundred  years  were  to 

45 


46  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

■pass  before  the  peninsula  reached  its  archaeological  apotheosis. 
Ignorant  and  bigoted  Spaniards,  intent  on  serving  the  interests 
of  that  ecclesiastical  institution  which  the  late  Professor  Huxley 
once  termed  "  The  Bloody  Wolf  of  Rome,"  swept  away  temples 
and  palaces,  broke  to  pieces  statues  and  idols,  built  bonfires 
with  bark  writings  and  sacred  books  (each  of  which  to-day 
the  Trustees  of  the  British  Museum  would  probably  regard  as 
cheap  at  a  thousand  guineas),  murdered,  pillaged  and  destroyed, 
everybody,  everything,  everywhere.  So  that  while  avaricious 
Spanish  eyes  were  turned  towards  the  glittering  temples  of 
Moctezuma's  capital  and  the  goldmines  of  Mexico,  Palenque 
and  Chichen  Itza,  Uxmal  and  Piedras  Negras  lay  crumbling 
and  forgotten  in  their  forests.  Yucatan  passed  into  a  back- 
water of  history.  The  ancient  annalists  refer  to  her  briefly 
or  not  at  all :  the  modern  Encyclopedia  usually  deals  with 
her  claims  for  notice  laconically  thus :  "  YUCATAN  :  see  under 
MEXICO."  Probably  not  fifteen  per  cent,  of  EngHshmen 
could  tell  you  offhand  her  exact  geographical  position,  and 
of  those  fifteen  per  cent,  there  would  be  few  whose  knowledge 
extends  beyond  a  vague  memory  from  schooldays  that  she  is 
physically  a  peninsula,  and  that  the  rattlesnake,  the  tapir 
and  the  giant  crested  lizard — the  iguana — haunt  her  forests. 

And  what  wonder  ?  Porfirio  Diaz,  sphinx-faced,  granite- 
hearted,  who  for  thirty  years  has  been  dictator  of  Mexico, 
wielding  a  power  as  autocratic  as  that  of  the  Tsar — he,  too,  if 
reports  are  credible,  knew  little  of  the  easternmost  portion  of 
his  realm  till,  a  year  or  two  ago,  Yucatan's  Governor,  ambitious 
of  presidential  patronage  and  fatally  forgetful  of  the  fable  of 
King  Stork,  begged  the  repubUcan  monarch  to  let  the  light 
of  his  countenance  shine  for  a  while  on  his  Yucatecan  lieges. 
And  no  sooner  was  it  announced  that  the  great  Diaz  would  go 
than  he  received  countless  letters,  some  anonymous,  some 
from  Governors  of  other  States,  warning,  imploring,  declaring 
the  Yucatecans  to  be  little  better  than  savages  and  cut-throats, 
that  the  inestimable  presidential  life  would  be  not  worth  a 
moment's  purchase  when  he  landed  at  Progreso.  Evidently 
his  subjects  knew  as  little  of  Yucatan  as  did  their  ruler. ^ 

President  Diaz  went,  he  saw,  and  he  .  .  .  was  staggered. 
Instead  of  the  uncouth  band  of  savage  rancheros,  armed  to 

1  While  in  Mexico  City  we  visited  in  vain  all  the  map  shops  and 
Government  offices  in  search  of  a  map  of  Yucatan.  All  the  maps 
available  were  those  based  on  the  Mapa  de  la  Peninsula  (1887),  which 
we  have  proved  to  be  hopelessly  inaccurate. 


YUCATAN    AND    HER    HISTORY  47 

the  teeth,  he  found  a  community  of  sybarites  among  whom 
the  only  difficulty  was  to  j5nd  a  man  who  was  not  a  millionaire 
or  the  son  of  one.  Instead  of  a  fever-haunted,  poverty-stricken, 
one-horse  town,  he  found  the  "  very  loyal  and  noble  city  "  of 
Merida,  a  Paris  in  miniature  for  vivacity  and  luxury.  As 
they  passed  within  the  gates  of  one  great  hacienda  or  farm, 
the  gardens  lit  with  myriads  of  coloured  lights,  Madame  Diaz 
clapped  her  hands  and  cried  out  gleefully,  "  Look,  Porfirio  ! 
Surely  we  have  never  seen  anything  so  lovely  !  "  Well  might 
she  so  say,  for  that  particular  haciendado  had  lavished  60,000 
Mexican  dollars  (about  ;^6,ooo)  to  dazzle  the  presidential  eyes 
for  one  short  evening. 

But  Merida  is  not  Yucatan,  and  the  henequen  millionaires 
of  Merida  strained  every  nerve  and  even  their  Fortunatus 
purses  to  prevent  their  shrewd  ruler  from  seeing,  beneath  the 
surface,  the  social  rottenness  of  the  country.  Of  the  amazing 
and  amusing  efforts  they  made  to  throw  dust  in  those  terrible 
eyes  we  shall  have  something  to  say  later.  What  the  President 
saw,  we  have  seen — the  almost  boundless  wealth  of  Merida  and 
the  sybaritic  life  led  by  the  haciendados.  But  we  have  seen 
more  :  we  have  seen  the  real  Yucatan.  For  months  we  have 
wandered  in  her  wilds.  We  have  shared  the  huts  with  the 
Indians  :  we  have  slung  our  hammocks  in  the  forests  :  we 
have  slept  in  the  palm-thatched  cabins  of  the  woodcutters  : 
we  have  lived  the  fisherman's  life  on  the  islets  of  the  east 
coast,  round  which  in  the  days  of  Cordoba  and  Cortes  cruised 
fleets  of  canoes,  fruit  and  corn-laden.  The  primary  reason 
of  our  trip  was  archaeological  exploration,  but  the  interest 
which  this  volume  must  have  as  containing  descriptions  of 
those  wondrous  ruins  which  have  earned  for  Yucatan  the 
title  of  "  The  Egypt  of  the  New  World  "  will  be,  we  beheve, 
enhanced  by  that  insight  we  are  enabled  to  give  into  the  social 
state  of  a  country  which  for  nearly  all  is  a  "  terra  incognita." 

And  now  for  a  Uttle  history.  It  was  on  the  30th  July,  1502, 
that  Christopher  Colimibus,  near  the  island  Guanaja  in  the 
Gulf  of  Honduras,  met  a  canoe  paddled  by  twenty-five  Indians 
and  carrying  as  many  women,  and  a  cargo  of  fruits,  cotton 
cloths,  copper  hatchets,  and  pottery.  The  men  wore  loin- 
cloths and  the  women  were  modestly  draped  in  mantles  of 
cotton.  By  signs  the  great  Spaniard  gathered  that  they  came 
from  a  rich  land  to  the  westward.  Such  is  the  first  know- 
ledge the  white  world  had  of  Yucatan  !  Four  years  later  Juan 
Diaz  de  Solis  and  Vincente  Yanez  Pinzon  sailed  for  Guanaja 


48  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

intent  on  completing  the  discoveries  of  Columbus.  Reaching 
Guanaja  they  steered  westward  and  discovered  the  east  coast 
of  Yucatan,  convincing  themselves  that  it  was  an  island,  but 
making  no  landing. 

On  the  2oth  May,  1506,  Columbus,  a  victim  of  injustice  and 
neglect,  ended  his  splendid  career  in  sadly  lonely  surroundings 
at  Valladolid.  His  two  successors  in  the  pioneer  work  of 
Yucatan's  discovery  came  to  untimely  ends,  Yafiez  Pinzon 
dying  in  Spain  a  year  later,  while  Diaz  de  Solis  was  eaten  by 
the  Indians  of  Rio  de  la  Plata.  In  1511,  more  by  bad  luck 
than  good  management,  the  Spaniards  came  again  into  contact 
with  Yucatan.  Nuiiez  de  Balboa,  Alcalde  of  Darien,  dispatched 
one  Valdivia  in  a  caravel  to  Hayti  for  provisions  and  rein- 
forcements. When  nearing  Jamaica  the  ship  was  wrecked 
on  the  Alacranes  Reefs,  and  the  Spaniards,  to  the  number  of 
twenty,  took  to  the  boats.  Seven  died  of  starvation,  and  the 
rest,  after  days  of  exposure,  were  washed  on  to  the  eastern 
coast  of  Yucatan.  Here — though  they  were  warmly  welcomed 
— it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  the  reception  accorded  to  them 
was  one  which  they  appreciated.  The  Indians,  making  a 
feast-day  of  their  arrival,  swarmed  down  on  the  beach  and 
insisted  on  their  coming  at  once  to  the  village,  where,  it  is  sad 
to  relate,  those  who  had  been  unlucky  enough  to  preserve  a 
little  adipose  tissue  in  spite  of  the  hardships  they  had  endured, 
were  accorded  the  honour  of  becoming  the  "  pieces  de  resist- 
ance "  at  the  banquet  which  the  chief  had  commanded  to 
celebrate  their  arrival.  The  less  plump  ones  were  enclosed 
in  glorified  chicken  coops,  where  they  were  fattened  with 
succulent  viands  until  such  a  time  as  the  chief  should  be 
"  disposed  to  put  his  lips  to  them." 

Unwilling  to  await  this  distinction,  the  unfortunate 
Spaniards  found  an  opportunity  one  night  of  breaking  the 
bars  of  the  coop  and  taking  to  the  woods.  Several  died  of 
exposure,  but  a  few  struggled  through  to  the  territory  of  a 
neighbouring  cacique,  who  appears  to  have  been  more  of  a 
vegetarian.  He  rejoiced  in  the  name  of  Hkin  Cutz.  The 
Spanish  fugitives,  for  some  reason  or  other,  perhaps  because 
they  made  praiseworthy  efforts  to  pronounce  his  name,  were 
taken  into  his  service  and  well  treated,  though  an  eight-hour 
day  does  not  appear  to  have  been  part  of  Hkin  Cutz's  pro- 
gramme. As  Joshua,  he  said,  "  Let  them  live  but  let  them 
be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  unto  my  people." 
Under  this  system  all  died  but  two,  Gonzalo  Guerrero,  a  swash- 


YUCATAN   AND    HER   HISTORY  49 

buckling  soldier,  as  his  name  suggests,  and  Jeronimo  de  Aguilar, 
a  young  priest.  Guerrero  (one  can  picture  him  the  thorough 
captain  of  industry,  cynical,  fearless,  taking  his  pleasure  where 
he  could)  took  to  his  new  life  like  a  duck  to  water  :  fell  in  love 
with  a  Mayan  girl,  stripped  off  his  clothes  in  favour  of  a  loin- 
cloth, painted  his  body  and  decorated  his  nose  and  ears  with 
stone  rings,  winding  up  with  a  very  decent  imitation  of  rever- 
ence for  the  Stone  Gods  who  had  it  all  their  own  way  in  Hkin 
Cutz's  kingdom. 

But  Aguilar  was  an  idealist,  and  though,  true  to  his  Church's 
teaching,  casuist  enough  to  keep  on  the  right  side  of  Hkin  Cutz, 
he  treasured  a  hope  of  some  day,  somehow,  returning  to  Spain 
and  its  Catholic  joys.  With  a  view  to  hastening  this  con- 
summation he  so  devoutly  wished,  he  took  the  Saints  into  his 
confidence,  and,  satisfied  of  their  assistance,  promised  at  all 
costs  to  preserve  that  chastity  which  is  believed  by  the  credu- 
lous to  be  stiU — as  it  doubtless  always  has  been — the  brightest 
jewel  in  the  crown  of  the  Catholic  priesthood.  Aguilar's 
misogynistic  tendencies  do  not  seem  to  have  much  troubled 
Hkin  Cutz  ;  but  his  successor  Ahmay  was  distinctly  uxorious, 
and  in  addition  appears  to  have  been  something  of  a  humorist. 
Aguilar's  lack  of  appreciation  of  his  maidens  worried  him 
somewhat,  and  he  determined  to  find  out  whether  it  was  the 
lack  of  opportunity  or  the  lack  of  taste.  When  the  young 
priest  was  not  cutting  wood  or  drawing  water,  he  was  sent  out 
fishing,  going  overnight  to  the  coast  and  sleeping  on  the  beach 
till  dawn,  when  the  fish  were  feeding.  One  day  Ahmay  ordered 
him  to  the  coast,  but  as  a  mark  of  his  favour  told  him  to  take 
as  his  companion  a  very  beautiful  girl  of  fourteen,  to  whom 
the  cunning  cacique  gave  instructions  that  she  was  to  "  fish  " 
for  Aguilar  while  he — poor  innocent — was  seeking  his  lord's 
breakfast.  Aguilar  did  not  much  care  for  his  girl  comrade, 
but  he  did  not  dare  to  refuse  :  so  off  they  started,  the  chief 
first  loading  his  faithful  servant  with  warm  garments  for  the 
night  journey  and  a  sort  of  en  tout  cas  bedspread.  As  the 
coast  was  not  far  distant,  and  the  travellers  had  not  much  to 
say  to  each  other,  they  got  over  the  ground  so  quickly  that 
the  night  was  not  far  spent  when  they  reached  Aguilar's  fishing 
"  pitch."  Seeing  his  companion  was  sleepy,  he  gallantly  made 
a  bed  for  her  in  the  woods  with  the  wraps  Ahmay  had  so 
thoughtfully  provided,  and  then  went  off  to  the  beach  and 
lay  down  on  the  sand.  But  the  temptations  of  St.  Anthony 
were  not  in  it  with  those  to  which  that  Indian  minx  subjected 


50  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

the  young  priest  till  dawn,  and  thus  it  is  the  more  gratifying  to 
learn  that  he  was  able  to  keep  his  arrangement  with  the  Saints, 
whereby  he  passed  into  the  highest  favoiir  with  Ahmay,  who, 
poor  weak  mortal  that  he  was,  was  convinced  that  Aguilar 
was  a  very  exceptional  young  man.  This  is  a  Spanish  story, 
and  must  be  taken  with  a  big  pinch  of  salt. 

But  to  return  to  more  serious  history.  Undeterred  by 
their  predecessors'  misfortunes,  the  Spanish  undertook  a  third 
expedition  to  Yucatan.  On  the  8th  February,  1517,  Francis 
Hernandez  de  Cordoba,  with  one  hundred  and  ten  soldiers  and 
three  ships,  sailed  from  Cuba,  and  on  the  twentieth  day  sighted 
an  island.  On  their  approach  five  large  canoes  put  ofi.  Signs 
of  friendship  prevailed  on  some  thirty  of  the  Indians  to  come 
on  board  Cordoba's  ships,  and  there  such  amicable  relations 
were  established  that  the  Spaniards  landed,  finding  to  their 
surprise  every  sign  of  a  considerable  civilisation.  For  the 
first  time  Europeans  saw  stone  buildings  in  America.  In  the 
temple,  approached  by  well-laid  steps,  they  saw  incense  being 
burnt  in  front  of  stone  and  wooden  idols,  while  files  of  women 
ministrants  chanted  near  the  altars.  Hence  Cordoba  christened 
the  island  "  Isla  de  Mujeres"  (Isle  of  Women).  Another  version 
has  it  that  the  Spaniards  found  gigantic  female  figures  of 
stone  at  the  south  end  of  the  island,  but  our  careful  search 
of  the  island  and  a  consultation  of  its  records  do  not  support 
this  version.  Thence  he  sailed  to  the  most  northerly  point 
of  Yucatan,  where  he  was  welcomed  by  the  chief,  who  came 
out  with  his  people  in  twelve  canoes  and  repeatedly  exclaimed, 
"  Connex  c  otoch  "  {"  Come  to  our  Town  "),  which  the  Spaniards 
beheved  the  name  of  the  place  :  hence  Cape  Catoche,  as  the 
point  is  still  called. 

The  Spaniards,  led  by  the  treacherous  cacique,  landed, 
and  were  soon  attacked  in  a  thick  wood  by  a  body  of  Indians 
armed  with  stone  axes,  bows,  and  lances  of  wood  hardened 
by  fire,  their  faces  and  bodies  painted,  wearing  on  their 
arms  an  armour  of  plaited  cotton,  beating  a  war  tune  on 
turtle-sheUs  and  blowing  horns  of  conch-shells.  Cordoba  lost 
twenty  men,  and  many  of  the  Indians  were  killed.  Returning 
to  their  ships,  the  Spaniards  sailed  on  to  a  point  where  at 
the  mouth  of  the  river  was  a  large  Indian  town  called  by  the 
natives  Kimpech,  the  modern  Campeachy.  Farther  on  a 
disastrous  fight  took  place  which  ended  in  the  loss  of  fifty 
Spaniards  and  the  retreat  of  Cordoba.  He  himself  received 
twelve  arrow-wounds,  and  but  one  soldier  escaped  unhurt. 


b 


YUCATAN   AND   HER   HISTORY  51 

Within  ten  days  of  his  reaching  Havana,  Cordoba  died  of  his 
wounds.  This  signal  disaster  did  not,  however,  deter  enter- 
prising Spaniards  from  looking  longingly  towards  this  verit- 
able will  o'  the  wisp,  La  Isla  Rica.  In  1518  an  expedition 
led  by  Juan  de  Grijalva  sailed  from  Matanzas.  This  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  the  island  of  Cozumel  and  a  fairly  complete 
reconnaissance  of  the  coastline  of  Yucatan.  A  third  expedi- 
tion, commanded  by  the  great  Cortes,  left  Cuba  on  the  i8th 
February,  1519,  made  first  for  Cozumel ;  and  thence,  cruising 
round  the  north-east  coast,  the  Spaniards  continued  their 
vo5rage  as  far  as  what  is  to-day  the  city  of  Vera  Cruz,  where 
the  glittering  promise  of  Mexico  once  and  for  all  removed 
the  great  Spanish  captain  from  Yucatecan  history. 

But  in  Cortes's  suite  was  one  Francisco  Montejo,  a  gentle- 
man of  Seville.  To  him,  on  the  8th  December,  1526,  a  grant 
was  made  for  the  conquest  of  the  "  islands  "  of  Yucatan  and 
Cozumel.  Fitting  out  a  small  armada,  he  sailed  from  Seville 
in  May,  1527,  with  380  troops.  He  made  first  for  Cozumel, 
where  he  landed  in  September  of  that  year,  establishing 
friendly  relations  with  the  chief,  Naum  Pat.  Thence,  taking 
with  him  an  Indian  guide,  he  sailed  to  the  east  coast.  With 
bombastic  prematureness  the  royal  standard  was  planted  on 
the  beach,  and  amid  cries  of  "  Viva  Espana !  "  the  whole 
country  claimed  for  the  King  of  Spain.  But  Montejo  was 
merely  beginning  his  troubles,  A  disastrous  march  through 
the  dense  pathless  bush — his  troops  footsore  and  fever-stricken, 
hunger  and  thirst  their  constant  comrades — ended  in  a  battle 
in  which,  with  fearful  losses,  the  invaders  barely  held  their 
own.  A  retreat  followed  ;  but,  undismayed,  in  1528  Montejo 
with  the  remnant  of  his  army  marched  on  Chichen  Itza.  The 
old  chroniclers  contradict  one  another  as  to  this  expedition 
to  Chichen.  We  believe  Montejo  made  but  one,  though  time 
would  allow  for  two  visits  and  two  temporary  settlements 
there,  as  some  writers  beheve.  In  the  metropolis  of  the 
Itza  tribe  a  friendly  reception  at  first  was  accorded  him  ;  but 
he  im wisely  divided  his  forces  by  dispatching  his  captain, 
Alonzo  Davila,  with  some  foot  and  horse  to  the  westward. 
Thus  weakened  he  was  soon  driven  out  of  Chichen,  and  forced 
to  the  sea  at  Campeachy.  Davila  fared  no  better.  Arrived 
in  the  dominions  of  a  neighbouring  cacique,  his  request  for 
provisions  was  fiercely  answered  by  the  latter,  who  said  he 
"  would  send  them  fowls  on  spears,  and  maize  on  arrows." 
After  two  years  of  weary  struggle  with  hunger  and  fever, 


52  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

harassed  the  while  by  Indians,  DavUa  rejoined  his  chief  at 
Campeachy.  Nothing  had  been  achieved  :  Yucatan  was  still 
unconquered.  Monte  jo  now  returned  to  Cuba  for  reinforce- 
ments, and,  thus  heartened,  he  made  an  attack  on  Tabasco, 
leaving  a  few  Spanish  at  Campeachy.  These  few,  weakened 
by  privations,  were  after  some  years  reduced  to  an  effective 
force  of  five  only.  The  camp  was  abandoned.  Gonzales 
Nieto,  who  had  planted  the  flag  amid  such  bombastic  shoutings 
on  the  eastern  beach  nine  years  earlier,  was  the  last  to  leave. 
In  1535  not  a  single  Spaniard  remained  in  Yucatan. 

Two  years  later  Montejo,  whose  attempt  on  Tabasco  had 
signally  failed,  returned  to  the  attack,  landing  at  Champoton, 
where  once  more  the  Spanish  flag  was  raised.  The  Indians, 
grown  shrewd,  left  the  heat  and  General  Malaria  to  do  their 
skirmishing,  and  when  Montejo's  camp  had  become  a  hospital, 
a  pitched  battle  all  but  drove  the  Spaniards  into  the  sea. 
Worse  than  this,  the  rumours  of  the  wealth  of  Peru  and  Mexico, 
of  the  dazzling  conquests  of  Cortes  and  Pizarro,  caused  de- 
sertions (for  the  poverty  of  Yucatan  had  now  become  notori- 
ous), and  one  by  one  Montejo's  men  slunk  off.  Nineteen 
stalwarts  at  last  were  all  that  were  left  at  Champoton.  Montejo 
sent  his  son  to  Cuba  with  urgent  requests  for  rehef.  In  1539 
stores  and  men  arrived,  and  Montejo,  distrusting  his  own 
fortune,  placed  the  conquest  of  Yucatan  in  his  son's  hands. 
The  latter  marched  out  from  Champoton,  gave  battle  to  the 
Indians,  and  completely  routed  them.  Advancing  into  the 
land,  in  one  day  three  fights  took  place,  the  Indian  dead 
being  so  numerous  that  they  literally  obstructed  the  roadway. 
After  a  march  of  many  months,  during  which  his  troops 
suffered  incredible  hardships  and  fought  their  way  almost 
league  by  league,  Montejo  reached  the  great  city  of  Tihoo 
early  in  1541. 

A  preliminary  victory  ensured  the  invaders  some  months 
of  peace.  But  the  clouds  were  gathering :  the  caciques 
formed  a  confederation,  and  on  the  nth  of  June  a  final  battle 
took  place.  Little  reliance  can  be  placed  on  the  figures,  but  if 
they  are  anywhere  near  the  truth,  the  pious  historian,  Father 
CogoUudo  of  the  Franciscan  Friars,  may  be  forgiven  for 
exclaiming,  in  an  ecstasy  of  faith,  "  Divine  power  works  more 
than  human  valour  !  "  For  the  Spanish  mustered  but  200, 
whUe  the  Indians,  it  is  alleged,  were  70,000  strong !  Be  that  as 
it  may,  the  Spanish  firearms  won  the  day,  and  the  6th  January, 
1542,  saw  the  formal  founding  of  the  city  of  Merida,  built  out 


^ 


YUCATAN    AND    HER    HISTORY  53 

of  the  stones  and  on  the  ruined  site  of  Tihoo.  The  Indians 
never  rallied ;  and  the  brutal  work  of  enslaving  them  was 
thenceforth  to  be  pursued  with  few  interruptions.  In  1561 
French  pirates  attacked  Campeachy  and  entered  Merida, 
and  in  1575  English  buccaneers  sacked  the  city.  Forced  to 
withdraw,  they  renewed  their  attack  in  1606,  but  unsuccess- 
fully. In  1632  the  Dutch  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  two 
years  later  British  pirates  made  a  descent  on  the  coast.  For 
the  next  half-century  Yucatan  was  the  prey 'of  pirates,  and 
Merida  was  attacked  again  in  1684.  Meanwhile  the  country 
had  been  constituted  a  Spanish  province  under  a  Captain- 
General  ;  a  see  of  Merida  was  created,  and  Spanish  towns 
built  on  the  ruins  of  the  Indian  pueblos. 

The  internal  history  of  the  peninsula  from  1684  during 
the  next  century  and  a  half  is  a  story  of  Spanish  cruelty 
and  bigotry,  of  Franciscan  arrogance  and  vandahsm.  The 
Spanish  settlers,  not  content  with  the  conquest  and  enslaving 
of  the  Indians,  busied  themselves  in  the  destruction  of  every- 
thing— buildings,  books,  statues — which  had  to  do  with  earher 
days.  Towns  were  built  on  the  ruins  of  Indian  villages  ; 
large  churches — the  majority  now  in  ruins — were  constructed, 
for  the  most  part,  out  of  the  stones  of  Indian  palaces,  and  the 
great  haciendas  were  formed  and  worked  by  gangs  of  miserable 
natives  whose  spirit  was  broken. 

In  1824  Yucatan,  which  had  borne  its  fair  share  in  the 
War  of  Independence  against  Spain  of  the  previous  year, 
became  a  Federal  State.  Amicable  relations  with  Mexico 
were  interrupted  in  1829  and  again  in  1840,  when  heavy 
taxation  brought  about  an  armed  revolt.  In  the  June  of 
the  latter  year  the  rebels  drove  the  Federal  forces  out  of 
Yucatecan  territory,  and  independence  was  declared.  In 
1843  General  Santa  Ana,  the  head  of  Mexico,  by  a  successful 
campaign  forced  Yucatan  into  the  Federation  once  more. 
In  1847  a  serious  Indian  revolt  occurred,  and  this  was  not 
suppressed  till  1853,  when  a  treaty  of  peace  was  signed  granting 
autonomy  to  the  Indians  of  the  east.  A  year  later  trouble 
broke  out  again,  but  in  i860  an  army  3,000  strong  attacked 
and  captured  Chan  Santa  Cruz,  the  Indian  capital.  The  town 
was  almost  at  once,  however,  retaken  by  the  natives  with  a 
loss  of  1,500  whites,  and  until  1901  it  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  Mayans.  Of  the  war  which  was  then  declared  against 
these  stalwarts,  of  the  injustice  of  its  inception,  and  of  the 
barbarous  methods  now  being  employed  against  them,   we 


54  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

shall  speak  later.  The  Mexican  Government  have  done  their 
best  to  hide  from  the  outside  world  what  exactly  is  happening 
in  far  Eastern  Yucatan,  but  despite  official  discouragement 
we  penetrated  the  district  and  are  in  a  position  to  tell  the 
whole  story. 

Of  the  authentic  history  of  Yucatan  previous  to  the  Con- 
quest it  might  almost  be  written  as  succinctly  as  in  the  famous 
chapter  "  Snakes  in  Iceland "  :  there  is  none.  Even  its 
ancient  name  is  in  dispute,  though  there  is  little  doubt  it  was 
"  Maya."  Columbus  is  the  first  to  record  that  name.  For 
the  first-half  century  or  so  after  the  founding  of  Merida,  the 
Spanish  vandals  were  far  too  busy,  in  their  ruthless  Christian 
zeal,  with  the  destruction  of  the  Mayan  towns  and  palaces, 
with  the  butchering  of  men  and  the  outraging  of  women,  to 
give  much  thought  to  the  past  of  the  unfortunate  race  which 
they  were  bent  on  degrading  and  enslaving.  Bishop  Landa, 
one  of  the  earliest  of  the  Catholic  bishops  of  Yucatan,  bears 
terrible  evidence  on  this  point.  The  Indian  chiefs  were  burnt 
alive  in  many  instances  ;  women,  after  outrage  and  gross  and 
filthy  indignities,  were  hanged,  their  babies  being  hanged  on 
their  feet — thus  making  gibbets  of  the  mothers'  bodies.  Landa 
says  that  there  is  no  doubt  that  until  his  countrymen  arrived 
chastity  was  dearly  prized  among  the  Mayans  :  death  being 
the  penalty  for  both  young  man  and  maiden  proved  unchaste 
before  marriage.  To-day  Mayan  morality  in  all  towns  and 
centres  where  the  Indians  are  in  contact,  or  have  long  been  in 
contact,  with  the  whites  is  loose  in  the  extreme.  Prostitution 
is  terribly  common,  practically  universal. 

When,  towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  task 
of  collecting  historical  data  was  undertaken,  naturally  enough 
the  Indians  consulted  had  little  to  give  but  a  hotchpotch  of 
tradition  and  legend.  With  an  alacrity  positively  suspicious 
the  so-called  books  of  Chilan  Balam  cropped  up  in  all  directions. 
Each  important  township  had  one  of  these  almost  worthless 
compilations  based  on  the  musty  memories  of  garrulous  old 
Mayans,  who  thus  sought  to  ingratiate  themselves  with  the 
domineering  Franciscan  friars.  The  Mayan  hieroglyphics 
were,  as  they  still  are,  undecipherable,  the  temple  records  and 
picture  writings  had  been  burnt,  and  the  oldest  Indian  as- 
sisting at  the  manufacture  of  these  tradition  books  must  have 
been  in  long  clothes  or  the  Mayan  equivalent  when  Cortes 
landed.  Yet  this  lack  of  credibility  has  not  prevented  many 
who  have  laboured  earnestly  and  long  in  the  field  of  Mayan 


YUCATAN   AND    HER   HISTORY  55 

archaeology  from  spoiling  their  work  by  plunging  into  the 
muddied  tideway  of  date  and  legend  and  emerging  convinced 
of  much  for  which  there  is  not  a  tittle  of  real  evidence.  Most 
of  the  tradition  books  agree  in  ascribing  Central  American 
civilisation  to  the  Toltec  nation,  and  "  Toltec  "  has  become 
the  rallying  cry,  the  shibboleth  of  those  who  struggle  to  un- 
ravel the  past  of  Central  America.  Learned  professors  from 
Berlin  and  Dresden  ;  enthusiastic  young  men  from  Harvard 
and  other  American  universities  ;  foreign  and  native  writers 
and  students,  clamber  or  tumble  headlong  over  the  Toltec 
fence.  With  the  j^erverse  persistence  of  the  National  School 
child,  whose  memory  of  dates  is  restricted  to  "  William  the 
Conqueror,  1066,"  at  which  moment  its  infantile  mind  sup- 
poses England,  London,  the  Tower,  the  Zoo,  and  Madame 
Tussaud's  to  have  come  into  instant  being,  so  "  648  a.d. 
Toltecs  arrived  at  Tula  or  Tulapan  "  crops  up  in  everything 
these  good  people  write.  King  Charles  I.'s  head  never  worried 
Mr.  Dick  half  as  much  as  the  Toltec  bogey  worries  them. 

Where  Tula  or  Tulapan  was,  is,  or  ever  has  been  :  where 
the  Toltecs  sprang  from  ;  what  ethnical  affinities  they  pos- 
sessed ;  whether  they  were  kin  to  those  affiliated  tribes  which 
have  most  certainly  inhabited  the  Americas  since  prehistoric 
times  ;  how  they  came  to  have  cut-and-dried  building  specifi- 
cations in  what  were  equivalent  to  their  breeches'  pockets, 
they  never  stop  to  tell  us.  One  professor  glibly  remarks, 
assuming  his  Toltec  premiss,  "  While  this  [the  Toltec]  race 
was  still  quite  at  a  low  stage  of  civilisation  the  Aztecs  advanced 
out  of  the  north  from  at  least  26°  north  latitude."  No  con- 
jurer ever  produced  rabbit  from  silk  hat  with  more  assurance 
than  the  professor  produces  the  Aztecs  "  out  of  the  north." 
That  "  at  least  "  is  distinctly  precious.  Was  ever  such  beg- 
ging of  the  question  ?  The  Aztecs  were  builders,  too  !  Where 
did  they  get  their  knowledge  ?  They  certainly  would  have 
difficulty  to  find  a  hint  of  it  in  the  vast  North  American 
Continent.  The  truth  is  that,  stripped  of  all  nonsensical 
fetish-worship,  there  is  not  an  iota  of  real  evidence  for  this 
Toltec  theory.  No  Toltec  nationality  ever  existed  ;  and  the 
explanation  of  that  civilisation  which  differentiates  the  Mayan 
peoples  and  their  Aztec  neighboiu-s  from  the  natives  of  the 
rest  of  the  Americas  is  to  be  sought,  as  we  endeavour  to  de- 
monstrate in  Chapter  XV.,  in  an  altogether  different  direction. 

Well  then,  we  have  no  real  pre-Conquest  history.  All 
that  seems  certain  is  that  in  Yucatan  no  kingship  in  the 


56  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

true  sense  existed.  The  land  was  ruled  by  caciques  (chiefs), 
each  the  head  of  a  tribe  or  tribal  family.  As  is  natural  in 
such  a  r6gime,  the  predominating  power  was  not  always  in 
the  same  hands.  About  1436  (Bishop  Landa,  writing  in  1556, 
gives  the  date,  and  this  agrees  with  native  tradition)  the 
tyranny  of  the  Cocomes  who  ruled  over  the  great  city  of 
Mayapan  caused  a  rebellious  confederation  of  lesser  caciques, 
which  ended  in  the  overthrow  of  the  Cocomes  family  and  the 
destruction  of  Mayapan.  This — the  great  event  of  the  more 
recent  pre-Spanish  history  of  Yucatan — was  followed  by  the 
uprise  of  the  chief  of  Chichen  Itza,  who  thenceforward  till  the 
Conquest  maintained  predominance.  These,  the  only  dates 
upon  which  reliance  can  be  placed,  fit  in  well  with  the  date 
which  we  are  incUned  to  assign  to  the  superb  ruins  of  Chichen, 
which  we  describe  in  detail  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER    IV 

FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF   YUCATAN 

A  SEA  of  greengage  green,  broken  by  scarce  a  ripple  save 
where  a  shark's  fin  curves  up  shiny  black  in  the  blazing 
sun  ;  a  semicircle  of  pale  sand,  fringed  by  brown  and  ma- 
hogany-red boarded  bams  of  warehouses,  with  here  and  there 
a  gaimt  brick  chimney ;  a  thin  belt  of  palm  trees  ;  three 
wooden  jetties,  and  beyond,  houses  stuccoed  white  and  salmon- 
pink  :  this  is  our  first  sight  of  Yucatan's  only  port,  Progreso. 
There  is  no  harbour,  for  the  shallows  stretch  far  seaward,  and 
steamers  of  any  draught  dare  not  come  within  five  miles  of 
the  coast. 

The  outward  and  visible  signs  of  the  town  have  scarcely 
come  distinctly  into  view,  and  we  have  barely  lost  sight  in  the 
heat  mist  of  the  monster  form  of  our  liner,  anchored  miles  in 
our  wake,  when  the  panting  tug  has  come  alongside  the  pier 
and  we  are  for  the  first  time  face  to  face  with  Yucatecans. 
A  Yucatecan  crowd  is  a  pleasant  sight  to  look  upon.  Personal 
cleanliness,  bright-coloured  vests  and  spotless  Unen  breeches 
are  a  welcome  change  for  the  traveller  who  comes  from  a 
Mexican  port.  The  Yucatecan  and  the  Mexican,  too,  are 
physically  very  unhke,  and  the  difference  is  all  in  favour  of 
the  former.  The  crowd  which  awaits  the  tug  is  a  bright,  clean- 
faced,  orderly  crowd,  and  as  we  step  ashore,  the  luggage  touts, 
many  of  them  remarkably  intelligent-looking  and  handsome 
fellows,  take  your  "  No,  muchas  gracias,"  for  an  answer,  which 
is  more  than  you  can  say  for  the  evil-smelling,  vulture-faced, 
blackmailing  gang  who  throng  the  quays  at  such  ports  as 
Vera  Cruz  and  Tampico.  Alas !  months  of  sojourn  in  the 
land  of  the  Mayans  are  to  alter  the  first  favourable  impressions 
of  that  Progreso  crowd.  Verily  are  Yucatecans  "  Whited 
Sepulchres  "  ! 

And  here  perhaps  it  would  be  as  well  to  define  a  Yucatecan. 

57 


58  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

The  population  of  Yucatan,  speaking  broadly,  consists  of  two 
classes,  slaves  and  savages.  The  former  are  the  Indians,  by 
centuries  of  brutality  degraded  and  robbed  of  that  spirit  which 
made  them  foes  worthy  of  Cortes's  prowess,  but  still  a  kindly, 
hospitable  people  for  whom  every  English  heart  must  feel  a 
keen  sympathy.  The  savages  are  the  Yucatecans,  the  mon- 
grel people  resulting  from  the  early  unions  of  the  Spanish 
with  the  Indian  women  ;  and  if  the  epithet  seems  harsh,  we 
would  ask  our  readers  to  reserve  judgment  till  they  have  finished 
this  volume.  The  tint  of  the  Yucatecan  is  that  of  a  half-baked 
biscuit,  but  the  eyes  are  black-brown  and  often  small,  and  the 
lank  black  hair  suggests  the  Indian  crossings  of  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries. 

At  the  end  of  the  jetty  a  lofty  lich-gate  of  wood  houses 
Senores  los  Aduaneros,  Messrs.  the  Customs  House  Officers. 
But  our  passports  are  from  headquarters  and  bear  a  Cabinet 
Minister's  seal,  so  our  baggage  is  soon  passed.  Over  the  Cus- 
toms House  gate  might  be  written,  varying  Dante's  terrible 
line,  "  All  hope  of  cleanliness  abandon,  ye  who  enter  here  "  : 
for  once  inside  Progreso  town  you  must  do  battle  with  tropical 
dust  at  its  worst.  Through  the  railway  yard,  where  the  sun 
beats  down  with  a  blistering  heat  on  trucks,  mules,  and  men, 
you  make  j'^our  way  to  the  train  through  filthy  little  arcaded 
streets,  your  boots  disappearing  at  each  footstep  in  the  ill- 
smelling,  garbage-littered  compound,  your  eyes  smarting  in 
the  clouds  of  it  you  kick  up.  i  ne  station  is  a  barn,  the  railway 
a  three-foot  gauge,  the  cars  are  rickety,  low-roofed,  cane-seated 
yellow  wood  affairs.  From  engine  to  brake  van  the  train  is 
American-made.  There  seems  little  to  choose  in  comfort 
between  the  classes,  but  for  the  sake  of  more  elbow-room  we 
"  plunge  "  our  three  centavos  a  kilometre  (the  usual  first-class 
fare  all  over  Yucatan),  a  fraction  less  than  a  penny  a  mile, 
distinctly  cheap  if  the  rolling  stock  were  better. 

As  the  little  train  jolts  through  the  outskirts  of  the  town, 
ringing  its  bell,  the  dust  it  raises  blending  with  the  resinous 
smoke  from  the  wood  fire  of  its  engine,  naked  yellow  babies 
look  up  from  their  play  in  the  dirt  and  scamper  into  shelter, 
while  female  faces  peer  out  between  the  iron  bars  which  do 
duty  for  glass  windows  in  the  one-storeyed-high  fiat-roofed 
houses.  Northern  Yucatan  is  as  level  as  an  Essex  marsh, 
and  the  line  runs  through  miles  of  country  at  first  glance  quite 
English  with  its  dense  covering  of  small  trees  like  nut  bushes 
and  silver  birches.     Nature  has  been  niggard  of  soil  to  the 


FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF   YUCATAN  59 

whole  peninsula,  but  perhaps  it  is  around  Progreso  that  you 
realise  most  that  the  Yucatecan  must  be  content  to  sow  his 
seed  in  the  "  stony  ground."  The  sundried  imdergrowth  is 
of  cactus,  stunted  shrubs,  and  sea  grasses.  Here  and  there 
this  breaks  to  give  way  to  swamps,  rich  in  purple  and  white 
orchids  and  golden  water  plants,  fair  to  look  on  as  the  sun 
touches  the  water  between  the  waving  rushes,  but  surely 
enough  the  happy  breeding-ground  of  the  "  Yellow  Jack  " 
mosquito.  Then  come  fields  of  henequen  or  hemp,  "  the  Green 
Gold  of  Yucatan," — the  plants  hke  huge  green  pineapples 
with  waxy  green  feathers  on  top, — enclosed  within  grey  stone 
walls  like  those  of  Scotland. 

As  we  near  the  capital  (the  distance  is  but  twenty-five 
miles )  the  carriages  fill  up,  and  you  squeeze  closer  into  your 
caned  seat  for  two  to  make  room  for  some  fat  Yucatecan  or 
his  ill-shaped,  chalk-faced  powdered  dame.  In  the  suburbs 
of  Merida  (there  are  miles  of  them)  the  rail  rims  between  rows 
of  native  huts,  palm-leaf  thatched  frameworks  of  wood  upon 
which  red  earth  is  plastered  and  then  stuccoed  or  whitewashed. 
Each  has  its  garden,  evidently  the  despair  of  its  owner,  for 
dogs,  pigs,  and  fowls  dispute  possession  of  it  with  tin  cans  and 
refuse.  But  even  in  these  unfavourable  surroundings  tropic 
Nature  beautifies  with  the  greeny-gold  leaf  of  the  banana  and 
the  heavy-hanging  greener  crown  of  the  cocoanut  palm.  Over 
all  rises  a  strange  vista.  Merida  might  well  be  called  the 
"  City  of  Windmills."  On  each  side  of  the  train  you  see  the 
horizon  literally  crowded  with  air  motors  for  pimiping  water 
from  the  limestone,  and  you  hear  it  whispered  in  a  tone  of 
pride  by  a  Yucatecan  to  his  neighbour  that  there  are  in 
Yucatan's  capital  6,000  of  these  eyesores. 

Merida  could  claim  another  aUas.  "  The  City  of  Wind- 
mills "  might  as  appropriately  be  called  "  The  City  of  Cabs." 
And  thej'  are  curious  cabs  too  :  cabs  without  sides  or  backs 
or  fronts ;  mere  frameworks  of  light  wood  with  leather  tops  and 
cloth  curtains  all  round,  which  roll  up  and  button,  or  roll  down 
and  shade  the  "fare";  spectral  four-wheelers,  as  if  in  pre- 
historic times  a  London  "  growler  "  had  emigrated  here  and 
propagated  a  species  of  tropical  growler,  all  skin  and  bones. 
Dozens  of  these  hackney  phantoms  await  us  in  the  station 
yard  ;  the  drivers  in  spotless  loose-fl3dng  Unen  shifts  and  linen 
trousers  bell-bottomed  over  their  bare  brown  feet  shod  with 
sandals,  their  headgear  wideawakes  of  black  or  brown  felt. 
The    boxes    axe    elaborately    ornamented   with   brass   nails 


6o  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

burnished  to  a  dazzling  brightness.  The  back  seat  (you 
must  not  sit  too  far  back  or  you  will  fall  out)  has  room  for 
two,  and  in  front  a  shelf  like  that  in  a  victoria  lets  down 
for  a  third  passenger.  There  are  hundreds  of  these  cabs  in 
Merida,  and  everybody  uses  them  all  the  time.  They  are 
not  the  luxury  they  are  in  most  capitals,  and  are  quite  a 
feature  of  the  place.  We  had  understood  there  is  only  one 
hotel  in  Merida  (it  is  a  libel,  for  there  are  three),  and,  seated 
in  the  phantom  car  we  select,  we  bowl  noiselessly  over 
asphalted  roads  towards  it. 

It  was  on  the  6th  January,  1542,  that  amid — one  can  be  sure 
— immense  bombast  of  trumpet-blare  and  drum-beat  the  first 
stones  were  laid  of  the  "  Very  Loyal  and  Noble  City  of  Merida." 
This  is  what  its  charter,  granted  by  His  Most  Catholic  Majesty 
Philip  II.,  called  it.  It  is  a  double-barrelled  misnomer.  Merida 
has  no  claim  to  loyalty,  for  she  revolted  from  Spain  as  soon 
as  she  conveniently  could,  and  she  has  never  been  loyal  to  the 
Republic  of  Mexico,  of  which — much  against  her  ^^dll — the 
country  of  which  she  is  the  capital  has  formed  part,  off  and 
on,  since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And 
Merida  is  in  no  sense  a  noble  city  ;  never  has  been  and  never 
can  be.  But  she  is  what  perhaps  is  better — a  clean  city. 
Cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness.  Merida  thinks  it  comes  first, 
and  she  has  let  the  other  virtue  lag  a  very  bad  second  in  her 
civic  race. 

But  she  has  not  always  even  been  clean.  Five  years  back 
her  streets  were  Saharas  of  ill-smelHng  dust  to  your  boot-tops 
in  the  dry  season,  and  sloughs  of  despond  in  the  wet.  No  one 
who  has  not  visited  Yucatan  can  realise  the  Aladdin-like  results 
of  the  showers  of  gold  which  have  fallen  upon  this  Danae  land 
as  a  result  of  her  staple  product,  henequen ;  but  directly  you 
enter  one  of  the  phantom  cabs  you  come  under  the  spell  oi 
a  city  which  is  magically  perfect ;  as  unlike  any  other  Spanish- 
American  town  as  is  possible.  The  millionaire  henequen 
growers  are  so  rich  that  they  really  do  not  know  what  to  do 
with  their  money  ;  and  so  it  came  about  that  the  ex-Governor 
Seiior  Molina  conceived  the  idea  of  reupholstering  Merida  tiU 
its  founders  would  never  recognise  their  handiwork.  The 
shape  of  the  city  is  much  what  it  was,  planned  on  a  vast  chess- 
board system,  all  the  streets  running  at  right  angles  and  parallel 
to  one  another,  forming  nine  square  miles  of  squat  stone-built 
houses,  almost  all  one-storeyed,  their  long  windows  heavily 
barred  instead  of  glazed.     But  just  as  a  carpet  makes  a  room. 


FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF   YUCATAN  6i 

Senor  Molina  saw  that  what  Merida  needed  was  paving,  and 
so  he  proceeded  to  get  an  estimate  from  a  French  asphalt 
company.  The  amount  was  so  huge  that  his  brother-million- 
aires on  the  Council  only  smiled  sickly  smiles  of  incredulity 
when  he  suggested  "  voluntary  contributions."  But  if  their 
ill-gotten  dollars  would  not  come  out  of  their  pockets  by 
fair  means,  the  Governor  determined  that  they  should  by  foul 
(at  least,  that  was  the  adjective  which  these  much  oppressed 
Croesuses  probably  apphed  to  his  methods) ,  and  he  taxed  every 
bale  of  henequen  loaded  at  Progreso.  In  this  way  he  raised 
a  gigantic  sum  for  the  beautifying  of  the  capital,  part  of  which, 
no  less  than  thirty  milhon  Mexican  dollars  {£3,000,000  sterling), 
was  spent  in  paving  the  streets. 

It  took  between  two  and  three  years,  and  the  result  is 
perfection.  From  north  to  south,  from  east  to  west,  side 
streets  and  main  streets,  for  the  full  three  miles'  width  of  the 
city,  the  surface  is  as  smooth  as  glass,  as  clean  as  marble. 
Never  was  there  such  paving,  and  never  will  there  probably 
ever  be  again,  for  there  is  no  parallel  to  the  circumstances  of 
unforeseen  wealth  which  has  come  to  Yucatan's  capital. 

We  had  been  favourably  impressed  by  the  cleanliness  of 
the  Yucatecan  crowds  at  Progreso,  and,  as  we  moved  easily  and 
without  a  vibration  down  street  after  street  of  well-matched  and 
well-built  houses,  we  rubbed  our  eyes  and  wondered  whether 
we  were  in  a  land  where  it  was  always  washing-day,  for  the 
people  on  the  sidewalks,  the  people  in  the  passing  carriages, 
the  police  at  the  comers  in  their  trim  holland  imiforms,  the 
children  playing  at  the  pavement  edge,  the  tradesmen  at  their 
shop-doors,  and  the  boys  and  girls  in  their  neat  hnens  returning 
from  school,  were  so  spotless  as  to  beggar  all  description. 

But  in  the  midst  of  oiu*  amazement  we  reached  our  hotel, 
a  massive  three-storeyed  building  in  two  squares,  neatly  floored 
with  tiles,  roofless,  wide  flights  of  stone  steps  leading  up  to 
galleries  from  which  was  access  to  the  bedrooms,  stone-floored, 
very  high-ceiUnged,  opening  through  wooden  sunblinds  on  to 
small  balconies.  We  were  very  tired  with  our  journey,  and 
the  coolness  of  oiu:  rooms  and  the  brightness  of  the  city  had 
such  a  lulling  effect  that  we  were  almost  persuaded  that  we 
had  reached  Utopia.  There  was  nothing  disquieting  in  our 
rooms  from  the  insect  point  of  view,  except  a  hne  of  harmless- 
looking  small  black  ants  which  were  taking  an  afternoon  walk 
along  the  tiles  at  the  corner,  and  the  fact  that  the  small  iron 
bedsteads  were  enveloped  in  mosquito-nets.     We  had  evidently 


62  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

reached  Utopia.  The  air  was  balmy  as  we  composed  ourselves 
to  sleep  that  night,  and  there  was  not  even  a  mosquito  in  our 
nets. 

Shortly  before  dawn  the  next  morning  (Sunday)  we  were 
roused  from  a  dreamless  sleep  by  a  din  so  terrific  that  to  our 
half-sleeping  wits  it  converted  itself  into  a  giant  tattoo  beat  on 
cracked  tea  trays.  We  started  up.  Boom-poom  (a  pause). 
Pom-m — poom-m.  The  last  was  a  ragged-edged  sound,  as 
flat  as  stale  soda  water,  as  lifeless  as  Queen  Anne.  Then  came 
a  shrill  noise  such  as  might  be  produced  by  a  violent  meeting 
between  a  butcher's  steel  and  the  treble  octave  of  a  "  cottage 
grand."  Then  Pom-poom  again,  and  then  a  noise  as  if  the 
blacksmith  of  "  spreading  chestnut  tree "  fame  had  gone 
suicidally  mad  and  had  spent  his  dying  fury  and  the  full  force 
"  of  the  muscles  of  his  brawny  arms  "  in  one  fell  blow  on  his 
anvil. 

Something  must  be  done  ;  we  could  not  patiently  bear 
this.  Perhaps  it  was  a  Utopian  form  of  fire  alarm,  and  we 
were  doomed  to  cremation  in  our  mosquito-netting  unless  we 
roused  ourselves.  At  this  moment  our  door  burst  open,  and 
a  fellow-traveller  from  Vera  Cruz,  in  purple  silk  pyjamas,  his 
hair  on  end,  a  wild  look  in  his  eyes,  cried  out,  "  Do  you  hear 
those  awful  bells  ?  "  Bells  !  Surely — we  rubbed  our  eyes 
and  gazed  open-mouthed  at  him — surely  they  weren't  bells ! 
What  superhuman  intelligence  was  this  he  showed  at  such  an 
early  hour.  We  listened.  Yes,  they  were  (that  anvil  note 
again  !)  meant  for — bells  ;  bells  as  cracked  as  any  March 
hare  ;  the  cathedral  bells  too,  pounding  their  awful  tea-tray 
notes  right  across  the  plaza  into  our  windows.  We  had  never 
heard  such  bells  ;  nobody  outside  Yucatan  ever  has.  It  was 
bedlam  in  the  belfry,  and  with  our  fingers  in  our  ears  we  walked 
on  to  the  balcony  to  see  how  the  Utopianites  were  bearing 
them. 

Merida  was  up,  and  did  not  seem  to  mind  the  bells  a  bit. 
Perhaps  they  are  an  acquired  taste  ;  the  people  in  the  streets 
seemed  not  to  notice  the  noise,  and  there  was  as  much  crowd 
as  there  was  din.  This  bell  scandal  was  evidently  the  rift 
within  the  Utopian  lute  ;  and  presently,  thank  heaven  !  the 
music  was  dumb,  and  we  were  able  to  watch  in  peace  from  our 
point  of  vantage  the  life  of  the  awakening  city.  It  was  a 
picturesque  scene.  The  street  was  alight  with  bright  colours 
and  pretty  faces.     The  women  of  Merida  were  going  to  early 


FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF   YUCATAN  63 

mass.  Here  were  a  knot  of  palefaced  maidens  in  muslins, 
rainbow-hued  in  their  variety,  pale  blue,  rose  pink,  saffron, 
heliotrope,  white  or  green — hatless,  their  raven-black  hair 
decked  with  flowers,  their  service  books  clasped  in  small  hands. 
These  were  the  upper  middle-class  femininity  of  the  city  (the 
wealthiest  women  never  walk  at  all).  But  a  prettier  picture 
still  were  the  Mestizas  (half-castes,  the  name  given  by  the 
wealthier  Yucatecans  to  their  lowlier  sisters),  the  beauties  of 
the  people,  whose  soft  skins  were  coloured  a  sweet  brown  by 
their  Indian  blood.  Their  dress  was  a  long  spotlessly  white 
softly-flowing  shift  of  Unen,  bordered  at  neck  and  hem  with 
embroidery,  cut  open  low  round  the  neck,  and  with  no  sleeves 
and  exposing  their  bare  feet  and  ankles.  It  was  a  costume 
which  framed  their  charms  in  quite  a  perfect  style.  And 
with  all  these  mingled  the  Indian  women  and  girls,  their  com- 
plexions a  warm  reddish  brown,  their  black  hair  draped  in 
cotton  wraps  of  blue  or  brown,  green  or  pink,  thrown  sari- 
fashion  round  the  head  and  falling  over  the  shoulders ;  their 
bare  feet,  innocent  of  shoe  tortures,  small  and  dainty,  if  a 
little  broad.  There  were  few  men  and  boys  about,  but  those 
looked  cleaner  than  ever — spotless  in  their  linens,  with  felt 
hats  or  panamas  ;  the  laddies,  in  their  tight  linen  knicker- 
bockers with  their  plimip  bare  brown  legs,  looking  the  picture 
of  boyish  health.  As  the  hour  wore  on,  Indian  dames  passed 
on  their  way  homeward  from  the  early  market,  balancing  on 
their  heads  large  flat  baskets  filled  with  oranges,  bananas, 
sweet  potatoes,  tomatoes,  eggs,  large  slices  of  salmon-fleshed 
melons  dotted  with  black  seeds,  small  pineapples,  lemons, 
limes,  green  and  red  peppers  and  garlic,  and  often  in  the  midst 
of  this  market  medley  sat  a  small  hen  or  two,  as  contentedly 
as  if  they  were  brooding  over  a  sitting  of  eggs. 

A  wealthy  Yucatecan  who  has  traveUed  much  is  credited 
with  saying,  "  After  Merida  give  me  Paris."  There  is  really 
much  to  be  said  for  his  patriotic  view.  Merida  is  a  beautiful 
city.  The  vista  down  the  long  street  from  our  balcony,  with 
the  gay  colours  of  the  girls'  dresses,  the  snowy  whiteness  of 
the  men's  clothes,  the  smart  brass-decked  skeleton  cabs,  the 
soft  yellow  of  the  houses  (aU  houses  in  Merida  are  by  order 
painted  yeUow  to  prevent  the  unpleasant  sun-glare  which  white 
walls  would  mean),  here  and  there  a  waving  crown  of  green 
peeping  over  the  housetops  from  some  garden-patio,  made  a 
right  pleasant  picture  against  the  deep  blue  of  the  cloudless 
sky.     But  Merida  owes  none  of  her  undoubted  beauty  to  her 


64  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

buildings.  There  are  but  three  worth  mention,  and  this  not 
from  any  architectural  merits  but  solely  because  of  their 
historical  interest.  These  are  the  cathedral,  the  bishop's 
palace,  and  the  house  of  Francisco  de  Monte  jo,  conqueror  of 
Yucatan.     They  are  all  in  the  Plaza. 

The  cathedral  is  a  gaunt  pile  of  plastered  mediocrity,  with 
naked  fagade  flanked  by  two  turreted  towers,  lair  of  the 
accursed  bells  which  had  marred  the  tropic  beauty  of  the 
morning.  It  was  completed  in  1598  and  cost  some  £60,000, 
equivalent  to-day  to  perhaps  a  quarter  of  a  million.  Within, 
there  is  little  worth  seeing  except  the  twelve  immense  columns 
which  support  the  roof.  The  hangings  and  drapings  are  as 
tawdry  as  is  the  much  begilded  altar.  The  pulpit  is  dusty, 
dirty  and  old,  and  is  reached  by  wooden  steps  literally  rotten 
and  in  holes.  But  if  there  is  nothing  worth  seeing  there  is 
something  which  is  very  astonishing.  On  each  pillar  is  hung  a 
notice  which  reads  :  "  Sirvanse  no  Escupir  en  el  Pavimento  de 
esfe  Templo  "  ("  You  are  requested  not  to  spit  on  the  floor  of 
this  church"),  and  on  the  flooring  of  the  plain  yellow-wood 
seats,  and  all  along  each  aisle  at  the  entrance  to  the  pews,  are 
spittoons  !  Yes,  it  sounds  incredible,  but  they  are  there — right 
up  to  the  altar-rails  a  vista  of  earthenware  abominations  such 
as  disfigure  the  sanded  quaintness  of  the  bar-parlour  of  an  old 
village  inn.  In  a  later  chapter  on  Yucatecan  manners  we 
shall  have  more  to  say  of  the  habit  thus  officially  countenanced 
by  the  Church.  That  perspective  of  spittoons  from  door  to 
altar-rail  in  Merida  Cathedral  has  probably  no  parallel  in  any 
country. 

The  bishop's  palace  adjoins  the  cathedral,  and  bears  the 
date  1757.  It  is  so  hideous  in  its  flat  stuccoed  plainness  that 
it  is  really  wonderful  that  even  the  Yucatecans  do  not  rebel 
and  raze  it  to  the  ground.  Beneath  it  entrance  is  obtained  by 
a  large  double  wooden  doorway  to  a  vestibule — opening  into 
the  bishop's  garden — which  forms  a  Lady  Chapel,  where  on  a 
trestle,  such  as  those  upon  which  the  cocoanut  and  sweetstuff 
men  do  their  roaring  trades  on  Bank  holidays  at  Hampstead, 
an  iron  tray  covered  with  small  spikes  is  provided  for  the 
faithful  to  stick  a  tallow  dip — value  one  centavo  (a  farthing) — 
in  front  of  a  plaster  image  of  the  Virgin. 

The  house  of  Monte  jo — now  the  property  of  one  of  the 
many  branches  of  the  Peon  family,  the  wealthiest  of  all 
Yucatecans — ^bears  the  date  1541,  and  is  thus  the  oldest 
building  in  Merida.    The  facade  is  fine,  and  the  doorway  is  a 


FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF    YUCATAN  65 

typically  Spanish  representation  of  militarism  plus  bigotry — 
two  knights,  armed  cap-a-pie,  being  engaged  in  the  congenial 
occupation  of  tramphng  underfoot  two  Indians  who  "  take 
it  lying  down,"  as,  alas  !   their  descendants  are  still  doing. 

Life  in  Merida  is  as  artificial  as — indeed  more  artificial  than 
— that  of  Mexico  City.  The  latter,  owing,  as  we  have  said,  her 
fashions  and  her  veneer  of  civilisation  to  Paris  and  New  York, 
is  assisted  by  her  size  in  still  being  much  herself.  Not  so  Merida. 
No  self-respecting  Yucatecan  wants  to  be  himself.  All  of 
them  are  pathetically  striving  all  the  time  after  a  culture  which 
they  do  not  understand,  and  which  fits  them  as  ill  as  his  dress 
suit  fits  the  hired  butler  at  a  suburban  dance,  "  Scratch  the 
Russian  and  you  find  the  Tartar."  Most  Yucatecans  are  the 
vulgarest  of  parvenus,  and  by  the  least  scratching  you  find  the 
savage.  They  are  ashamed  of  their  Indian  past,  and  by  an 
exaggerated  class-arrogance  they  try  to  widen  the  gulf  between 
themselves  and  the  Indians,  as  the  purse-proud  woman  thinks 
she  vnW  be  mistaken  for  a  lady  if  she  calls  every  servant  a 
"  slut."  They  love  to  emphasise  their  superior  wealth  by 
dubbing  their  lowlier  brothers  and  sisters  mestizos  and  mes- 
tizas.  The  truth  is  the  Yucatecans  form  but  one  class,  and  they 
are  all  mestizos.  There  are  few  pure  Indians  in  the  capital, 
and  those  are  the  domestic  servants  of  the  wealthy  famihes. 

You  do  not  see  the  great  contrasts  of  wealth  so  marked  in 
Mexico  City.  The  whole  town  has  an  air  of  prosperity,  and 
it  is  not  an  air  merely — it  is  a  fact.  During  the  past  twenty 
years  the  group  of  large  henequen  growers — about  a  score — 
have  divided  among  themselves  as  a  result  of  this  "  green 
gold,"  no  less  than  800,000,000  Mexican  dollars.  And  this 
vast  sum  has  percolated  through  the  whole  place.  Merida  is 
a  Monte  Carlo  for  extravagance  and  extortion.  There  is  no 
social  standard  but  £  s.  d.  A  man  is  or  is  not  great  socially 
in  proportion  to  his  banking  account.  Nowhere  in  the  world 
probably  is  money  so  absolutely  God  as  here.  We  shall  show 
later  what  moral  effect  this  fact  has  had  upon  the  citizens, 
and  through  them  upon  the  whole  of  so-called  civihsed 
Yucatan.  Corruption  and  venality  are  rampant.  Few  races 
have  stamina  enough  to  resist  the  corroding  influences  of 
sudden  wealth.  The  silver  mines  of  Mexico  proved  the  knell 
of  Spanish  imperial  greatness.  Lord  Beaconsfield  said  once, 
"  Only  a  great  man  can  stand  power."  In  Yucatan  wealth 
is  power,  the  only  power,  and  the  Yucatecans  stand  it  very 
badly. 


€(5  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

In  this  city  of  mushroom  miUionaires  everything  is  natu- 
rally very  dear.  Food  is  practically  all  imported.  We  had 
been  told  that  at  our  hotel  it  was  impossible  to  get  a  square 
meal  for  less  than  five  dollars  (ten  shillings) .  It  was  not  quite 
so  bad  as  that,  but  for  half  that  sum  it  is  true  enough  you 
could  only  get  just  such  a  snack  as  an  honestly  hungry  Briton 
would  regard  as  a  wholly  inadequate  quick-lunch-talk-business- 
while-you-eat  style  of  meal.  Few  of  the  Yucatecans  eat  out 
of  their  own  houses,  and  thus  restaurants — at  any  rate  of  the 
cleanly  and  better  class — are  few  and  far  between*.  Those 
which  do  exist  are  literally  dens  of  robbers.  The  traveller 
in  Yucatan — as  indeed  in  all  Mexico — has  to  learn  what  to 
a  Briton,  accustomed  to  more  or  less  trust  his  fellow-man,  is  a 
very  unpleasant  lesson,  namely  that  you  can  trust  no  one. 
The  only  safety  on  ordering  a  meal  is  to  first  drive  a  bargain. 
You  must  know  down  to  the  smallest  roll  or  condiment  what 
your  repast  is  going  to  cost  you.  No  Merida  hotels  or  restau- 
rants ever  attach  prices  to  their  menus.  They  know  a  trick 
worth  two  of  that.  Each  restaurateur  is  a  gastronomic 
Procrustes  who  cuts  his  prices  according  to  "  the  cut  "  of  his 
customers.  An  article  served  at  twenty-five  centavos  to  one 
diner  will  at  the  next  table  boom  to  fifty  at  the  discretion  of 
the  subtle  waiter.  It  is  very  hard  to  always  remember  to  do 
this  unpleasant  bargaining  before  you  take  your  place  at  a 
table.  But  you  are  literally  lost  if  you  do  not.  On  this  glorious 
Sunday  morning  we  were  successfully  caught  in  a  place  where 
they  charged  four  shillings  for  three  glasses  of  lemonade  and 
three  or  four  fly-blown  cakes.  The  cakes  you  would  get 
anywhere  for  a  penny,  and  lemons  could  be  bought  in  the 
street  outside  at  six  a  penny. 

The  streets  of  Merida  are  full  of  life  and  bustle,  the  clean- 
liest of  bustle.  Even  the  blind  beggars  (blindness  is  rather 
common)  who  crouch  against  the  walls,  with  their  plaintive 
cry  of  "  Pohre  Ciego,"  are  as  neat  as  a  new  pin.  Smartly 
varnished  mule-drawn  tramcars  tinkle  their  way  to  and  from 
the  suburbs.  Outside  the  railings  of  the  cathedral  sit  all  day 
a  line  of  Indian  women  in  front  of  baskets  filled  with  cakes, 
flatfish,  appetising-looking,  sometimes  as  much  as  two  or  three 
feet  across.  Under  the  arcades  of  the  Municipal  Palace,  which 
forms  the  north  side  of  the  plaza,  is  a  motley  scene  of  life. 
Here  are  tiny  cigar-booths  ;  small  drinking-counters  whereat 
are  dispensed  hour  after  hour  to  thirsty  crowds  "  re  frescos," 
drinks  of  squashed  fruits — the  deliciously  sweet   guanabana, 


FIRST    IMPRESSIONS    OF   YUCATAN  67 

limes,  cocoanut  water,  pineapple  or  whatnot — and  iced  waters ; 
withered  beldames  with  baskets  of  sweets ;  lottery-ticket 
sellers  and  itinerant  booksellers  ;  while  at  the  small  round 
tables  set  in  the  doorways  the  Yucatecan  loafers  drink  coffee 
or  the  native  spirits,  and  from  within  the  shaded  rooms  is 
heard  the  eternal  click-click  of  billiard  balls  (billiards,  the 
French  game  without  pockets,  is  a  mania  in  Yucatan)  as  the 
young  Yucatecans  crowd  round  the  green  tables.  The  edges 
of  the  arcaded  pavements  are  occupied  by  large  chairs  on 
daises  ;  lolling  in  the  chair  the  Yucatecan  lad  who  will  pohsh 
your  boots  for  fifteen  centavos.  The  Yucatecan  jeunesse  dorie 
are  dandies  if  nothing  else,  and  this  must  be  the  reason  why 
there  are  more  bootblacks  to  the  square  mile  in  Merida  than 
in  any  capital  we  wot  of.  But  the  lordly  bootblack  who 
waits  for  you  to  come  to  him  is  not  half  as  picturesque  a  figure 
as  the  peripatetic  bootboy.  All  day  long  these  little  roguish- 
eyed  rascals  wander  round  the  plaza  carrying  their  boot  boxes 
and  begging  you  to  let  them  kneel  in  front  of  you  and  make 
your  boots  like  looking-glasses.  The  boys  are  all  so  pretty 
and  have  got  such  winning  smiles  that  you  are  insanely  inclined 
to  have  your  boots  blacked  every  quarter  of  an  hour.  Joking 
apart,  boot-blacking  has  been  reduced  to  a  science  in  Merida, 
and  the  operators  put  out  of  joint  the  noses  of  the  London 
Boot  Brigade. 

Time  was  when  Merida  was  far  more  picturesque  than  she 
is  to-day.  In  the  old  city,  when  few  of  the  citizens  were  grand 
at  reading,  streets  were,  as  indeed  they  were  once  in  London, 
known  by  their  signs.  Thus  at  one  corner  there  was  a  wooden 
image  of  a  flamingo  ;  this  was  Flamingo  Street.  Another 
was  the  street  of  the  "  old  woman,"  the  comer  being  decorated 
with  an  effigy,  highly  coloured,  of  a  bespectacled  dame.  There 
was  a  Tapir  Street  adorned  with  a  representation  of  that  queer 
pig-deer  which  still  haunts  the  swampy  forests  of  Southern 
Yucatan  and  Chiapas ;  a  Crane  Street,  and  so  on.  But  all  this 
is  a  thing  of  the  past.  America  has  invaded  Yucatan  even 
to  her  street-naming,  and  Merida,  with  her  48th  and  63rd 
Streets,  with  the  street-numbers  reduplicated  on  the  comers 
thus :  503,  62nd  Street,  503,  is  as  maddening  and  intricate  as 
New  York.  Only  one  of  the  old  signs  remains,  that  of  the 
elephant. 

As  you  cross  the  plaza  towards  the  market,  it  is  difficult 
to  picture  what  the  old  city  must  have  been  like  when  roads 
were  not  roads  and  the  plaza,  now  a  wonderfully  kept  square 


68  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

of  grass,  flowers  and  stone,  was  a  mangy  patch  of  leprous 
grass  dotted  with  trees,  to  which  were  tied  mules  which  had 
brought  in  produce  from  the  country. 

But  the  alterations  in  Merida  are  surface  alterations.  The 
only  wonder  is  that  the  city  is  as  healthy  as  it  is,  for  there  is 
no  attempt  at  any  general  sewerage  system,  no  main  drains, 
and  every  householder  is  a  law  unto  himself  on  this  vital  ques- 
tion. Each  hot  season  there  are  outbreaks,  sometimes  very 
serious,  of  yellow  fever.  But  the  city  is  a  healthy  city ;  there 
is  no  doubt  about  that.  There  is  a  general  avoidance  of  well- 
water  for  drinking  purposes,  and  as  a  substitute  the  most 
elaborate  arrangements  are  made  for  storing  every  drop  of 
rain-water  during  the  wet  season.  This  is  done  by  every  house 
of  any  size  having  enormous  cemented  tanks  under  their  patios, 
the  water-pipes  from  the  roofs  connecting  with  them.  Thus 
the  two  huge  quadrangles  of  our  hotel  were  nothing  but  gigantic 
reservoirs  tiled  over.  The  rainy  season  practically  never 
fails  Yucatan  ;  and,  though  not  as  regular  in  its  advent  as 
the  Indian  monsoon,  keeps  up  year  by  year  its  average  of 
supply.  Surface  refuse  is  dealt  with  summarily  by  the 
most  picturesque  set  of  road-sweepers  imaginable.  Neatly 
uniformed  in  white  drill  or  brown  hoUand,  they  wear  pith 
helmets  adorned  with  metal  badges  bearing  their  number,  and 
look  like  soldiers.  In  front  of  them  they  push  by  means  of 
a  long  handle  a  tin  shovel,  some  four  feet  long,  which  runs  on 
neat  little  wheels.  These  men  are  everywhere,  and  take  very 
good  care  that  garbage  is  nowhere.  The  water-carts,  too,  are 
worth  a  mention:  gigantic  wooden  hogsheads  painted  in 
yellow  stripes.  These  generally  work  at  night,  and  take  up 
their  supply  from  huge  water-taps  which  jut  out  from  the  walls 
of  buildings,  and  upon  which  the  men  tie  brown  hoUand  piping 
in  the  most  primitive  fashion  to  fill  their  carts. 

The  evenings  at  Merida  are  the  gayest  times,  for  then  all 
folks,  rich  and  poor,  come  out  to  spend  the  cool  hours  in  the 
plaza.  There  is  very  little  twilight  ever  in  the  tropics,  and 
as  soon  as  the  sun  is  down  and  it  is  dusk  enough,  the  wealthy 
Yucatecans  have  a  queer  habit  of  sitting  in  rocking-chairs  out- 
side their  houses.  A  whole  group  of  ladies  will  thus  take  the 
air  in  front  of  the  huge  doorways  of  the  biggest  houses,  sur- 
rounded by  two  or  three  cavaliers.  Later  on  the  carriages 
are  ordered,  and  sleepy-eyed  beauties  drive  round  and  round 
the  plaza  in  the  dark,  apparently  enjoying  this  rather  queer 
form  of  carriage  exercise.     In  the  centre  of  the  plaza  itself 


FIRST   IMPRESSIONS   OF    YUCATAN  69 

the  town  band  assembles,  and  this  is  a  signal  for  a  nightly 
promenade  of  the  humbler  Meridians.  Nothing  can  be  more 
picturesque  or  typical.  The  seats  are  filled  for  the  most  part 
with  the  older  people  ;  fat  old  men,  linen-suited  and  besandalled, 
armed  generally  with  an  incongruous  ill-rolled  umbrella,  smoke 
and  doze  ;  beside  them  soUd-looking  Yucatecan  matrons  with 
gold  chains  round  their  necks  from  which  hang  gold  coins  and 
a  metal  or  ivory  crucifix  ;  at  their  feet  a  baby  or  two,  dressed 
in  the  shortest  of  shifts,  play  about. 

But  young  Merida  walks.  Yet  here  again  there  is  some- 
thing which  attracts  the  English  eye,  for  there  is  a  complete 
separation  of  the  sexes.  The  girls  walk  together  in  twos, 
threes  and  fours  one  way,  and  the  young  dandies,  in  their 
spotless  white-hnen  bell-bottomed  trousers,  belted  with  orna- 
mental belts,  over  which  are  hung  blue  and  white  striped 
cloths  reaching  to  their  knees  like  butchers'  aprons  put  on 
sideways,  gaudily  coloured  silk-cotton  vests  and  over  these 
white-hnen  coats,  walk  the  other.  All  the  youths  have  a  pretty 
habit  of  going  hand  in  hand,  or  with  arms  round  each  other's 
necks.  They  are  there  to  see  the  girls,  and  in  the  hope  that 
the  girls  will  see  them.  But  the  curious  thing  is  that  you 
never  see  them  look  at  one  another.  The  groups  of  chatting 
youths  and  maidens  pass  and  repass  one  another  round  and 
round  under  the  trees,  in  and  out  of  the  paths,  and  watch  as 
hard  as  you  like  you  will  never  see  an  ogling  glance  or  catch 
a  hint  of  that  coarse  chaff  which  is  inseparable  from  such 
a  congregating  of  lower-class  youth  of  both  sexes  in  a  city 
like  London.  It  really  is  quite  extraordinary,  the  naivete  of 
it  all,  the  determined  way  in  which  the  eternal  sex  problem 
seems  tabooed  here.  We  sat  for  hours  watching  the  orderly 
crowds,  and  never  once  did  we  see  a  girl  stop  in  her  walk  to 
speak  to  a  man  or  any  youth  attempt  to  speak  or  to  walk 
with  a  maid.  It  was  decorum  in  excelsis.  It  reminded  one 
of  the  famous  description  of  Boston  as  the  place  "  where 
respectabiUty  stalks  imchecked." 

But  respectability  is  usually  perilously  near  being  a 
synonym  for  mawkish  dullness.  Here  it  was  not  so.  You 
had  absolute  decorum  ;  there  was  no  suspicion  of  noisy  horse- 
play or  hooliganism  ;  there  was  not  the  shghtest  need  for  a 
policeman  (as  a  matter  of  fact  none  appeared  during  the 
whole  evening)  to  keep  order  ;  and  yet  the  crowd  was  as 
perfect  a  specimen  of  the  brightest  popular  life  any  city  could 
show.    They  had  aU  come  out  to  enjoy  themselves,  and  they 


70  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

enjoyed  themselves  like  children,  with  a  simple  unaffected 
gaiety  which  was  very  infectious.  With  all  their  faults  the 
Yucatecans  have  the  saving  grace  of  good  temper,  not  from 
a  geniality  of  disposition  so  much  as  from  a  physical  apathy 
which  makes  them  reluctant  to  the  effort  which  losing  one's 
temper  involves.  And  this  merry,  laughing  crowd  in  the 
plaza,  the  simple  unadorned  beauty  of  the  dark-eyed  lassies, 
the  knots  of  handsome  youths  arms-linked,  the  plump  babies 
contentedly  playing  in  between  the  legs  of  the  strollers,  the 
old  people  dozing  in  the  shady  seats,  and  the  mellow  light 
from  a  huge  electric  standard  dappling  with  a  moonlike 
radiance  the  exquisitely  cleanly  pathways,  made  such  a  picture 
of  pleasant  contentment  as  was  quite  Utopian.  In  the 
darkened  roadways  the  wealthier  beauties  of  Merida  drove 
round  and  round  the  plaza  like  bats  circling  round  a  lamp. 
But  though  there  were  many  of  them  whose  lascivious  beauty 
would  have  made  most  men  forswear  their  most  cherished 
convictions,  our  hearts  were  in  the  plaza  with  the  chattering, 
happy  crowd,  and  we  were  quite  sorry  when  the  band,  which, 
with  an  extraordinary  display  of  energy,  had  played  four 
tunes  in  two  hours,  struck  work  and  the  folks  dispersed. 


CHAPTER   V 

A  YUCATECAN   BREAKFAST,   AND  OTHER   "  SIGHTS  " 

UNLESS  one  is  endowed  with  the  appetite  of  the  proverbial 
ploughboy  there  is  surely  nothing  which  puts  you  ofi 
your  food  more  than  having  too  much  on  your  plate.  One's 
sympathies  go  out  to  the  irritable  old  gentleman  at  the  London 
club  who,  having  ordered  a  plate  of  beef  and  getting  beef  and 
a  plate,  snapped  out  angrily  to  the  waiter,  "  Do  you  think 
I  haven't  eaten  for  a  month  ?  "  The  next  worse  thing  to 
having  too  much  on  yoiu*  plate  is  to  have  too  much  on  the 
table.  Every  traveller  knows  the  bewildering  effect  of  those 
breakfasts  served  on  the  Paris  and  Mediterranean  Railway, 
when  seven  dishes  are  placed  before  you,  with  fifteen  minutes 
in  which  to  eat  their  contents.  But  though  there  is  no  time- 
limit  for  feeding  in  Yucatan,  you  have  got  to  get  accustomed 
to  the  whole  meal,  in  all  its  courses,  being  placed  before  you 
at  once. 

We  had  brought  with  us  to  Merida  several  letters  of  intro- 
duction, and  on  the  Monday  we  presented  one  of  these  to  a 
Yucatecan  millionaire  whom  we  ran  to  earth  in  his  office  (he 
was  mayor  of  the  city)  transacting  official  business.  After 
our  preliminary  greetings  he  said,  "  We  Yucatecans  never 
ask  anybody  to  our  houses,  but  I  should  like  you  to  see  the 
interior  of  a  Yucatecan  home.  Therefore,  will  you  breakfast 
with  me  to-morrow  at  11.30  ?  "  In  fulfilment  of  this  engage- 
ment we  turned  up  the  next  day  in  his  patio  at  the  appointed 
hour.  The  house  is  one  of  the  finest  in  Merida,  and  is  so 
typical  of  the  people  as  to  be  worth  a  short  description. 
Entering  through  the  patio,  bright  with  flowering  shrubs, 
with  orange  trees  loaded  with  the  golden  fruit,  with  palms 
and  evergreens,  you  ascend  a  short  flight  of  stone  steps  into 
a  long  central  tiled  hall  forming  a  kind  of  glorified  verandah 
on  two  sides  of  the  courtyard.  On  the  tiles  are  thrown  a  few 
cheap  coloured  mats.     Ranged  in  two  rows  facing  each  other 

71 


72  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

are  eight  or  ten  American  bent  wood  rocking-chairs.  On 
the  walls  hang  a  few  oleographs.  Here  we  were  received  by 
our  host  in  a  linen  suit,  and  his  Seiiora,  a  celebrated  Meridian 
beauty,  daintily  dressed  in  a  pink  muslin  frock,  the  mother, 
as  we  afterwards  discovered,  of  seven  children,  though  she 
herself  looked  little  more  than  out  of  her  teens.  One  or  two 
other  guests,  male  relatives,  all  in  cool  linens,  having  arrived, 
our  hosts  lead  the  way  to  the  further  end  of  the  hall,  out  of 
which  opens  the  dining-room.  Not  at  all  such  a  dining-room 
as  we  English  associate  with  the  sacred  occupation  of  feeding. 
It  is  really  nothing  but  another  tiled  annexe  to  the  hall  with 
huge  doorway,  but  without  doors  (there  are  no  real  doors 
between  the  rooms  in  Yucatecan  houses),  at  which  the  chickens 
and  turkeys  from  the  back  yard  are  congregating  to  see  the 
fun,  hopping,  cackhng,  out  of  the  way  of  the  half  dozens  of 
Indian  women  servants  who  are  pattering  in  with  bare  feet 
from  the  kitchen  of  which  you  catch  a  glimpse  down  a  vista 
of  tiled  yard. 

But  here's  the  table,  and  what  a  spread  !  There  are  only 
eight  of  us  to  breakfast,  for  it  is  the  children's  school  hour, 
and  thus  they  are  not  present  ;  but  if  there  were  eighty-eight 
of  us  we  feel,  as  we  look  at  the  groaning  board,  that  the 
Indian  maids  would  be  able,  when  everybody's  appetite  was 
satisfied,  to  gather  up  of  the  fragments  that  remained  many 
basketfuls.  As  we  take  our  places,  our  host  perhaps  detects 
the  amazement  in  our  eyes,  for  he  says  with  a  wave  of  his 
hand,  "  I  wished  you  to  have  a  Yucatecan  meal.  It  is  always 
our  custom  to  have  everything  on  the  table  at  once."  There 
is  certainly  everything,  almost  everything  you  can  think  of. 
There  is  a  dish  of  steaks  ;  a  stew  of  rabbit ;  a  great  plate  of 
pork  sausages  ;  chickens  stewed  and  chickens  roasted  ;  turkey 
minced  with  egg  and  turkey  in  puris  naturalibus  ;  a  greasy 
mess  of  pork  joints  ;  a  great  heaped-up  mass  of  venison  ;  a 
vast  soup-tureen  of  beef  broth  ;  a  dish  of  chopped  eggs  and 
tortillas  ;  a  huge  salted  sausage  in  red  skin,  a  favourite  food 
of  all  Yucatecans  ;  a  minced  mess  of  meat  known  throughout 
Yucatan  as  Chile  con  came  ;  a  plate  of  veal  cutlets  ;  a 
large  boiled  fish,  the  famous  red-snapper  of  the  Mexican  Gulf  ; 
and  last  but  not  least,  turtle  steaks.  And  for  vegetables  there 
are  dishes  of  tomatoes,  of  green  and  red  peppers,  of  garlick  and 
onions,  of  black  beans  (frijoles)  squashed  into  a  greasy  dark 
purple  pulp,  of  snowy  pyramids  of  rice,  of  boiled  plantains,  of 
sweet  potatoes,  and  boiled  Indian  corn.     But  the  sweets  are 


A   YUCATECAN    BREAKFAST  73 

here  too  ;  jellies  and  stewed  fruits,  cranberries  squashed  into 
a  luscious  disguise  of  pipless  semi-liquid  jelly  fringed  round 
with  cream  ;  pineapples  stewed  in  thick  slabs,  and  peaches 
floating  in  a  wine-tinted  syrup.  And  among  all  these  plats 
de  jour  (the  wonder  is  that  the  Indian  maids  have  found  room 
to  place  them  on  the  table)  are  china  baskets  of  fruits,  apples 
from  California,  oranges  from  our  host's  farm,  bananas  and 
banana-apples,  peaches  and  the  purple-brown  caumita,  which 
looks  like  a  cross  between  a  rosy-cheeked  apple  and  a  nectarine 
and  has  a  white  soapy  flesh  with  a  taste  which  is  somewhat 
like  that  of  a  green  fig  soaked  for  an  hour  in  a  lather  of 
delicately  scented  soap.  And  to  wash  down  this  Gargantuan 
feast  there  were  three  cut-glass  short-stemmed  long-bodied 
goblets  beside  each  breakfaster,  which  were  kept  filled  by 
the  Indian  maids  with  red  and  white  wines,  aerated  waters, 
iced  lemonade  made  from  the  limes  from  the  patio,  fruit 
drinks,  or  iced  milk. 

Bread-throwing  at  school,  if  we  remember  aright,  was  an 
offence  punishable  with  the  sixth  book  of  the  Aeneid  to  write  out 
and  the  loss  of  a  half  hohday  as  the  minimum  penalty.  In 
Yucatan  it  is  all  the  fashion  in  the  highest  circles.  No  sooner 
had  we  taken  our  places  at  the  table  than  an  Indian  maid 
brought  in,  holding  them  in  her  brown  hands,  a  towering  pile 
of  soft  white  doughy  tortillas,  each  about  as  big  as  a  large 
Abemethy  biscuit.  These  she  placed  at  the  side  of  our  hostess, 
who  at  once  began  to  throw  them  to  us  all.  It  was  so  adroitly 
done  that  before  you  had  recovered  from  the  amazement 
with  which  the  mere  act  filled  you,  you  found  yourself  ad- 
miring the  exquisite  dexterity  of  the  gentle  thrower.  Those 
of  our  readers  who  have  visited  Monte  Carlo  and  admired,  as 
every  one  must,  the  marvellous  precision  with  which  the 
croupiers  flip  the  golden  Louis  to  the  lucky  '*'  punters,"  will 
be  able  to  imagine  something  like  the  dexterity  of  our  hostess. 
A  tortilla  whizzed  circling  across  the  table  under  your  very 
nose,  and  landed  with  exquisite  softness,  like  a  tired  dove,  at 
the  side  of  your  host's  plate.  Whizz,  whirr  !  here  comes 
another  !  Why,  it's  like  boomerang-throwing,  for  this  laist, 
you'll  swear,  circled  round  you  before  it  sank  nestling  under 
the  edge  of  the  plate  of  steaming  pork-stew  in  front  of  you. 
The  air  is  thick  with  these  doughy  missiles.  Nobody  is  the 
least  surprised  except  us,  and  we  become  quite  absorbed  in 
watching  the  friendly  bombardment.  Our  host  engages  us, 
as  the  newspapers  say,  in  '  animated  conversation  "  ;  enquires 


74  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

the  purposes  of  our  tour,  and  our  theories  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  Mayan  people.  It  is  hard  to  give  him  our  whole  attention, 
for  we  feel  we  are  losing  all  the  fun.  For  the  tortillas  are 
whizzing  over  the  table  now  and  round  it  just  like  boomerangs, 
and  then  the  hostess's  supply  is  exhausted.  But  here  is  a 
plump  Indian  maid  with  a  fresh  supply,  snowy  white  and 
softly  fluffy,  such  as  would  fill  a  London  muffin  man's  heart 
with  envy.  It  is  all  very  funny,  and  the  climax  is  reached 
when  your  host  peels  an  orange  of  some  very  rare  flavour, 
and  offers  you  the  juicy  dripping  quarter  in  his  fingers,  following 
this  up  with  a  like  exhibition  of  his  hospitable  wish  to  share 
with  you  his  apple  and  his  peach. 

We  had  defended  ourselves  as  well  as  we  could  from  the 
unbridled  hospitality  of  our  host,  but  all  the  same  we  felt 
like  boa-constrictors  who  had  made  an  injudicious  meal  of 
goats  whole,  when  we  packed  ourselves  into  a  skeleton  cab 
to  pay  a  visit  of  inspection  to  the  Merida  prison,  which  is  one 
of  the  sights  of  the  place.  The  drive  thither  was  through 
one  of  the  finest  thoroughfares  in  the  city,  lined  with  sub- 
stantially built  bungalow-houses  of  stone  and  stucco,  each 
standing  in  its  picturesque  tropical  garden,  a  mass  of  bloom 
and  waving  fan-palms.  This  street  debouches  upon  the  broad 
Avenida  de  Paz,  a  wonderful  stretch  of  asphalt  running  the 
full  width  of  the  city  and  forming  its  western  frontier.  Beyond 
this  opens  out  the  really  fine  Plaza  de  Porfirio  Diaz,  a  great 
oval  of  lawn  intersected  by  broad  paths  of  asphalt  meeting 
in  a  large  central  space  ornamented  by  a  small  artificial  lake 
with  fountain.  The  Penitenciaria  Juarez  fronts  upon  the 
plaza,  a  long  low  building  of  limestone  stuccoed,  one-storeyed 
save  over  the  central  doorway,  where  a  turreted  second  storey 
forms  the  residence  of  the  President,  as  the  governor  of  the 
gaol  is  called.  This  official  met  us  at  the  doorway.  He  was 
a  Mexican  of  about  forty,  a  tall,  handsome,  military-looking 
man,  swarthy-skinned,  with  a  big  black  moustache.  He 
impressed  us  very  favourably,  for  there  was  in  the  face  a 
certain  charm  of  frankness  and  straightforwardness  which 
is  not  characteristic  of  the  Mexicans,  and  is  almost  wholly 
lacking  in  the  Yucatecans.  His  smile  was  quite  kindly,  though 
behind  it  it  was  not  difficult  to  detect  a  certain  official  grim- 
ness  which  suggested  a  man  capable  of  anything  if  duty 
demanded.  He  had  been  imported  into  Yucatan  because 
of  his  reputation  as  a  specialist  in  the  governing  of  gaols,  and 
what  we  saw  of  the  administration  of  the  building  under  his 


A   YUCATECAN   BREAKFAST  75 

control  suggested  that  Yucatan  had  been  very  wise  in  her 
importation. 

Armed  with  an  ordinary  walking-stick,  in  linen  suit  and 
a  panama  hat,  he  led  the  way  across  the  central  hall,  where 
loafed  half  a  dozen  soldiers  in  hoUand  uniforms  ornamented 
with  green  and  white  braidings  and  wearing  a  cap  of  the 
French  kepi  type,  to  the  interior  of  the  prison.  The  iron 
gates  were  unlocked  by  a  convict  dressed  in  a  red  and  white 
striped  shirt,  the  President  explaining  that  all  the  short-term 
and  good-conduct  men  wore  these,  while  the  more  desperate 
characters  have  blue  and  white  striped  shirts.  From  the 
gateway  three  long  corridors  branched  off,  and  we  passed  down 
each  in  turn.  Out  of  these  opened  on  each  side  the  cells, 
small  cubicles  of  stone,  their  only  furniture  a  wooden  shelf, 
some  three  feet  wide,  let  into  the  wall  about  three  feet  from 
the  ground  and  supported  by  two  wooden  legs.  Upon  this 
shelf  the  prisoner  sleeps,  his  bedclothes  the  simple  blanket 
universal  throughout  the  coimtry.  In  the  comer  of  the  cell 
was  a  small  gutter  and  drain  for  washing  down  the  cell,  which 
was  ventilated  by  a  small  grated  window  in  the  comer  furthest 
from  the  corridor.  At  the  end  of  the  central  passage  was  a 
large  stone  room  where  convicts  in  blue  striped  shirts  were 
busy  making  hammocks.  The  place  reminded  one  of  a  hop 
garden  in  Kent,  There  were  long  tows  of  posts,  two  to  each 
man,  between  which  were  stretched  the  rough  string  frame- 
works of  the  hammocks,  the  men  passing  up  and  down  between 
the  posts  threading  the  strings  backward  and  forwards  like 
carpet-weaving.  Passing  through  this,  we  came  into  a  large 
garden  quadrangle  at  the  further  end  of  which,  in  a  big  shed, 
scores  of  red-striped  convicts  were  busy  carpentering.  At  a 
signal  from  the  President's  stick  the  buzzing  of  lathes  and 
saws  stopped,  as  if  by  magic,  and  the  men  stood  at  attention. 
The  superintendent-carpenter  was  called  up,  and  explained 
everything  to  us,  and  the  President  called  one  or  two  of  the 
men  to  him  and  asked  particulars  of  their  cases.  One  of 
these  was  a  nigger  who  rejoiced  in  the  British  name  of  John 
Wilhams.  With  a  broad  grin  which  showed  his  white  teeth 
to  the  gums,  he  told  us  that  he  was  serving  a  month's 
sentence  for  fighting  a  man  in  the  street.  All  the  men  looked 
well  cared  for  and  contented. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  courtyard  was  a  large  washhouse 
with  baths  for  the  men  and  big  sinks  in  which  the  prison 
washing  was  done.     Close  by  was  a  blacksmith's  shop  where 


76  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

a  score  of  men  were  engaged  in  all  sorts  of  iron  work,  much 
of  it  quite  artistic,  the  chief  job  at  the  moment  being  the 
designing  of  railings  for  the  outside  of  the  Penitenciaria,  which 
had  been  opened  only  a  short  time.  Here  the  President  told 
us  that  much  vigilance  had  to  be  exercised  to  prevent  the 
more  desperate  men  from  using  their  opportunities  to  make 
less  innocent  things  than  railings.  Only  a  few  days  before 
our  visit  one  of  the  workmen  had  been  found  in  possession 
of  a  bloodthirsty-looking  knife  which  he  had  manufactured 
with  the  purpose  possibly,  as  the  President  coolly  said,  of 
trying  its  metal  upon  him.  Close  by,  sitting  in  the  garden, 
were  a  row  of  men  busy  weaving  sacks  from  henequen  fibre. 
Crossing  the  yard,  we  were  shown  the  kitchens.  Here  were 
two  or  three  large  circular  blocks  of  masonry,  into  each  of 
which  were  let  several  coppers  or  ovens,  the  fireplaces  be- 
neath. The  whole  building  had  a  businesslike  and  cleanly 
air,  and  a  couple  of  convicts  were  engaged  in  manufacturing 
a  stew  which  had  a  very  garlicky  Yucatecan  smell.  We 
complimented  the  President  upon  these  kitchens,  which 
would  certainly  very  favourably  compare  with  those  in  even 
a  first-rate  British  barracks. 

After  having  inspected  an  excellent  miniature  hospital 
which  formed  an  annexe  in  the  rear  of  the  gaol,  we  were  taken 
by  the  President  to  his  private  room,  v/here  from  a  safe  he 
produced  the  prison  books.  These  were  most  interesting 
volumes  from  the  criminologist's  point  of  view.  To  each 
prisoner  was  devoted  a  page,  headed  by  a  photograph  of  him, 
stripped  to  the  waist  and  with  head  shaved.  Thereunder  were 
entered  details  of  his  crimes,  birth,  parentage,  age,  health, 
weight,  and  any  physical  peculiarities.  They  do  not  go  in 
for  fingerprints  in  Yucatan,  Two  or  three  facts  struck  us 
as  we  turned  the  pages  of  these  truly  human  documents. 
First,  there  appeared  to  be  no  Indians  in  the  gaol.  Secondly, 
the  clean-shaven  presentments  of  the  culprits  emphasised 
to  a  startling  degree  the  physiognomical  lowness  of  the 
Mexican  type.  The  majority  of  the  men — certainly  of  those 
imprisoned  for  the  more  serious  offences — were  Mexicans,  and 
not  Yucatecans.  Some  of  them  were  mere  lads,  but  one 
and  all  had  features  which  suggested  the  atavism  of  crime. 
They  were  bom  murderers.  And  thirdly,  as  was  logical 
enough,  four-fifths  of  the  offences  chronicled  in  these  books 
were  homicide  or  robbery  with  violence.  It  was  a  curious 
sidehght  into  the  condition  of  even  this  peaceful  corner  of 


A   YUCATECAN    BREAKFAST  ^^ 

the  Mexican  Republic — "  that  purple  land  where  law  secures 
not  life,"  We  were  astonished,  too,  to  notice  that  the  maximum 
penalty  for  mmder  appeared  to  be  fifteen  years'  imprison- 
ment. The  President  explained  that  as  a  rule  capital  punish- 
ment was  not  inflicted,  but  was  reserved  for  parricides  and 
murderers  of  the  most  brutal  kind.  We  ventured  to  sug- 
gest that,  in  such  a  land,  this  was  a  somewhat  ill-judged 
leniency.  But  the  President  shook  his  head.  He  probably 
thought  that  it  would  make  too  serious  an  inroad  upon  the 
population  of  the  Republic  if  every  murderer  was  shot.  The 
supreme  penalty  of  the  law  here,  as  in  Mexico,  is  always  by 
the  rifle  bullet,  never  the  rope. 

The  President  explained  in  detail  the  administration  of  the 
prison,  and  the  regulations  seemed  to  be  quite  Utopian  in 
their  mildness.  Thus  each  prisoner  is  allowed  to  see  his 
relatives  once  a  fortnight,  and  they  can  bring  him  food.  During 
these  \'isits  the  utmost  vigilance  is  needed  to  prevent  the 
smugghng-in  of  contraband  articles,  money  and  so  on.  As 
illustration  of  this,  the  President  took  from  his  desk  a  broken 
tortilla  into  which  had  been  kneaded  two  half-dollars  and 
the  tortilla  then  cooked.  The  ruse  had  been  discovered,  and 
now  the  rule  is  for  every  tortilla  brought  into  the  gaol  to  be 
broken  in  two  by  the  guards.  The  Gilbertian  element,  which 
we  had  noticed  so  much  in  Mexico,  was  represented  here  by 
the  truly  astonishing  provision  of  a  gaol  band,  which  dis- 
coursed sweet  music  to  the  culprits  every  afternoon.  Evi- 
dently our  friend  the  President  firmly  beheved,  with  Congreve, 
that 

"  Music  hath  charms  to  soothe  the  savage  brceist.'* 

Another  benevolent  regulation  was  that  by  which  the 
prisoners  received  on  their  release  all  the  moneys  which  they 
had  earned  by  industries,  the  only  deduction  being  for  the 
purchase  of  materials  and  the  upkeep  of  the  working  sheds. 
The  President  took  us  out  to  a  gallery  where  were  stored  a 
quantity  of  really  excellently  made  pieces  of  furniture,  tables, 
writing-desks,  wardrobes,  washstands,  chairs,  and  carved 
cupboards.  In  this  way  a  prisoner  on  his  release  is  some- 
times entitled  to  as  large  a  sum  as  six  himdred  dollars  (£60). 
Having  inspected  the  school  department  where  the  hiunanising 
effects  of  education  were  tried  upon  the  criminals,  we  were 
taken  up  to  the  roof  of  the  prison  to  view  the  method  of  guard- 
ing it.     Between  the  outside  street  wall  and  the  inner  wall 


78  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

of  the  building  was  a  moat  some  thirty  feet  wide.  In  this 
were  stationed  at  intervals  soldiers  armed  with  rifles.  On 
the  outside  wall,  some  two  or  three  yards  broad,  paced  more 
armed  sentries,  who  thus  commanded  an  entire  view  of  the 
whole  prison.  In  bidding  the  President  good-bye  we  said, 
what  we  felt,  that  he  was  the  head  of  an  establishment  which 
did  him  the  utmost  credit,  and  from  the  humanising  and 
rational  system  of  which  the  Enghsh  Prison  Commissioners 
might  take  many  valuable  hints. 

There  is  a  Museum  in  Merida,  a  poor  affair  and  badly 
housed  in  three  dark  rooms  ;  but  there  were  several  things 
we  wanted  to  see  specially,  so  we  made  our  way  thither  after 
leaving  the  prison.  With  some  difficulty — for  our  driver  did 
not  appear,  with  true  Yucatecan  stupidity,  to  know  that 
his  city  contained  such  a  very  unnecessary  adjunct — we  ran 
the  national  treasure  house  to  earth  in  a  back  street,  where  a 
small  brass  plate  on  a  decayed-looking  doorway  announced 
itself  as  "  El  Museo."  The  director,  a  middle-aged  Yucatecan, 
whose  amiability  was  only  equalled  by  his  archaeological 
ignorance,  was  routed  out  of  his  hammock  by  his  little  ten- 
year-old  son  who  opened  the  door  to  us,  and  sleepily  pro- 
ceeded to  do  the  honours  of  the  place.  It  is  a  great  pity  that, 
with  such  limitless  wealth  and  such  boundless  opportunities, 
Merida  has  taken  no  pains  to  establish  a  Museum  worthy  of 
her  position  as  the  capital  city  of  the  Egypt  of  the  New 
World.  What  we  saw,  if  it  had  not  been  so  sad,  would  have 
been  really  comic.  Absolute  confusion  reigned.  There  was 
no  catalogue,  the  smiling  director  forming  a  peripatetic  one. 
Exhibits  bore  numbers  which  were  thus  meaningless  to  every 
one  but  himself.  It  was  Mexico  Museum  over  again  on  a 
humbler  scale.  W^retched  pieces  of  Spanish  carved  stone-work 
from  the  interiors  of  churches  or  from  the  fa9ades  of  seven- 
teenth-century houses,  were  jumbled  up  with  really  marvellous 
pieces  of  Indian  workmanship,  figures  in  bas-rehef  of  gods 
and  animals  and  warriors  in  feathered  dress.  But  the  good 
director  had  not  been  content  with  making  a  hotchpotch 
such  as  one  sees  in  the  shop  of  a  dealer  in  marine  stores  and 
scrap-iron.  He  was  guilty  of  archaeological  crime,  for  on  the 
top  of  a  Spanish  church  pillar  he  had  actually  cemented  a 
carved  Indian  head  from  one  of  the  temples.  In  another 
corner  a  slab  of  stone,  an  eighteenth-century  Spanish  coat-of- 
arms,  had  joined  forces  by  means  of  cement  with  a  wonderful 
Indian  frieze.     The  result  was  ludicrous  in  the  extreme  ;  but 


A   YUCATECAN    BREAKFAST  79 

when  we  expostulated  with  him,  he  smiUngly  explained  that 
he  had  done  it  to  "  prevent  them  from  falling  about  "  ! 

There  was,  as  far  as  quantity  is  concerned,  an  excellent 
display  of  Indian  pottery,  incense-bumers,  water-pots  and 
domestic  utensils,  and  small  stone  figures  of  gods.  But 
these  were  all  lying  haphazard  in  a  case  with  Spanish  pottery 
and  tile  work.  One  of  the  most  interesting  exhibits  from 
the  archaeologist's  point  of  view  is  the  much  disputed  "  Cozumel 
Cross."  Found  on  the  island  of  Cozumel  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  it  was  brought  to  Merida  and  placed  first  in  the 
patio  of  the  Franciscan  Convent,  then  in  the  Church  of  the 
Mejorada,  whence  it  was  removed  to  its  present  position.  It 
is  a  very  ordinary  stone  cross,  standing  some  three  feet  high 
with  a  two-foot  cross-piece.  On  it,  in  half  rehef,  is  an  image 
of  the  Saviour,  made  of  plaster,  coloured,  with  the  hands 
and  feet  nailed.  Chiefly  upon  this  reUc  has  been  based  a 
ridiculous  theory  that  at  some  remote  date  Christianity  had 
been  preached  to  the  Indians  and  that  the  worship  of  the  Cross 
was  found  to  exist  in  Yucatan  by  the  Spaniards.  The  truth 
is,  as  the  American  traveller  J.  L.  Stephens  showed  years  ago, 
the  "  Cozumel  Cross  "  is  nothing  but  a  poorly  sculptured  piece 
of  ornamentation  from  the  first  CathoUc  church  built  in  the 
island  of  Cozumel  by  the  order  of  Cortes.  The  director  made 
vigorous  efforts  to  convince  us  of  its  Indian  origin,  but  one 
look  at  it  was  enough  ;  and  we  passed  on  to  an  exhibit  which 
was  the  special  object  of  our  visit. 

In  Guatemala,  around  Copan  and  Quirigua,  skulls  have 
been  unearthed  from  time  to  time  the  teeth  in  which  had  in 
some  instances  been  ornamented  with  tiny  discs  of  polished 
jade.  The  workmanship  was  of  the  most  exquisitely  precise 
nature,  and  the  object  had  evidently  been  adornment  and 
not  dentistry.  When  these  skulls  were  submitted  to  expert 
dental  surgeons  in  America,  they  declared  the  work  so 
excellent  as  to  be  unsurpassable  even  with  the  present-day 
mechanical  devices  and  instruments.  Since  these  finds, 
archaeologists  have  been  searching  for  years  in  Northern 
Yucatan  for  some  skull  which  exhibited  a  like  dental  orna- 
mentation. A  few  months  before  we  arrived  in  Yucatan  their 
persistent  hopes  had  been  fulfilled.  About  twenty  miles  to 
the  north-east  of  Merida,  at  a  town  called  Motul,  during 
casual  excavations  at  a  hacienda,  a  skuU  was  found  which  now 
lay  before  us.  Several  teeth  in  the  upper  and  lower  jaw  were 
missing,  but  in  the  former  two  of  the  front  teeth  had  let  into 


8o  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

their  centre  tiny  discs  of  bluey-green  jade  so  firmly  done  that, 
after  the  lapse  of  centuries,  the  stone  still  formed  a  surface 
flush  with  the  enamel  of  the  tooth.  Since  our  return  to  England 
we  have  seen  in  the  British  Museum  a  skull  from  Ecuador, 
in  which  some  of  the  upper  teeth  are  ornamented  in  the  same 
way,  but  with  gold. 

Only  one  room  of  the  three  was  devoted  to  Indian  anti^ 
quities,  and  after  the  director  had  made  a  special  point  of 
showing  us  a  gigantic  broken  stone  phallus  which  appeared 
to  interest  him  and  his  little  son  more  than  any  of  the  other 
exhibits, — (characteristically  enough,  for  the  Yucatecans  are 
nothing  if  they  are  not  phallic  worshippers), — we  spent  a 
few  minutes  in  rambling  round  a  medley  of  cases  containing 
such  incongruities  as  foetal  monstrosities  in  bottles  of  spirits 
of  wine,  pistols  which  in  their  youth  had  had  the  honour 
of  dangling  round  the  waist  of  Yucatecan  heroes,  a  model  of  a 
gas  engine,  examples  of  sixteenth-century  ecclesiastical  furni- 
ture, moth-eaten  collections  of  bugs  and  beetles,  examples  of 
the  coinage  of  all  nations  (very  faulty  collections),  and  some 
battered  Spanish  armour.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  Ego  in 
the  Yucatecan  Kosmos,  and  these  rooms  represented  self- 
complacency  run  amuck,  with  its  mementoes  of  persecuting 
Catholic  clerics,  pseudo-heroes  and  municipal  nonentities; 
with  the  tag-rag  and  bob-tail  of  their  wretched  relics,  their 
chairs,  their  wigs,  their  coats,  their  walking-sticks,  their 
slippers  and  their  snuff-boxes.  On  the  walls  were  a  series  of 
ill-drawn  pictures  representing  poor  (!)  Spaniards  being  dis- 
embowelled, hanged,  quartered,  and  burnt  by  ruthless  Indians  ; 
and  as  we  made  our  way  to  the  door,  our  cicerones  pointed 
out  to  us  four  large  wooden  wheels  which  had  supported  the 
truck  upon  which  Dr.  Le  Plongeon  had  had  the  Chacmool 
he  discovered  at  Chichen,  and  which  we  mentioned  in  de- 
scribing Mexico  Museum,  brought  to  the  coast.  If  Merida 
had  not  got  the  statue — and  in  the  circumstances  she  has 
probably  not  lost  much — she  at  least  had  the  genuine  cart- 
wheels. 

The  attitude  of  Mexico  towards  foreign  archaeologists  is 
that  of  the  "  dog  in  the  manger."  This  is  more  particularly 
noticeable  in  her  policy  regarding  the  comparatively  recent 
activity  of  German  and  American  students  in  Yucatan.  We 
were  the  first  Englishmen  to  approach  the  Government  for 
permission  to  cross  the  Peninsula,  but  we  found  ourselves 
somewhat  the  victims  of  the  indiscretions  of  foreign  rivals. 


A    YUCATECAN    BREAKFAST  8i 

whose  conduct  during  the  past  few  years  has  gone  somej,way 
to  justify  the  churlishness  of  the  Mexicans.  The  Mexican  or 
Yucatecan  is,  as  a  rule,  an  illiterate  sensualist,  who  cares 
not  a  jot  about  his  country's  past  and  is  incapable  of  differ- 
entiating between  a  magnificent  ruined  Indian  palace  and 
the  stuccoed  carcass  of  a  hideous  eighteenth-century  church. 
Too  mean  and  too  indolent  to  enter  upon  researches  for  them- 
selves, they  regard  with  suspicion  and  dislike  all  who  would 
study  the  ruins.  The  passport  granted  us  was  none  too 
generous,  and  its  wording  made  it  clear  enough  that  our 
archaeological  enthusiasm  was  scarcely  welcomed. 

In  accordance  with  its  terms,  we  had  reckoned  our  most 
important  official  duty  in  Merida  was  to  call  on  the  Con- 
servator of  Moniunents.  We  expected  an  Ancient  of  Days 
whose  talk  on  Mayan  problems  would  be  a  treat.  But  nothing 
is  as  you  expect  it  in  this  Gilbertian  land.  We  found  the 
Conservator  gently  rocking  himself  amid  the  orange  trees 
of  his  patio.  He  was  a  sleek,  self-satisfied,  shiny-booted, 
white-waistcoated  yoimg  man,  good-looking  of  the  barber's- 
block  style.  He  languidly  informed  us  that  he  had  never  seen 
the  ruins  of  Chichen  :  a  confession  equivalent  to  the  Keeper 
of  England's  Regaha  admitting  that  he  had  never  set  eyes 
on  the  Koh-i-noor.  Our  amazement  was  so  obvious  that  he 
apologetically  added  that  he  had  photographs.  It  was  irre- 
sistibly reminiscent  of  poor  Dan  Leno  as  private  detective, 
tired  of  watching  the  susjjected  house,  taking  a  photograph 
of  it  and  sitting  at  home  in  comfort  watching  that. 

Months  later  we  learned  that  a  bitter  battle  had  been  waged 
in  Mexico  City  by  contending  bands  of  German  and  American 
archaeologists  to  influence  the  Federal  Government  to  appoint 
their  respective  nominees  to  the  then  recently  created  post  of 
Conservator.  ^Tiat  might  not  result  were  the  work  of  guard- 
ing and  studying  the  marvellous  ruins  of  Yucatan  in  able 
and  competent  native  hands  ?  The  Germano-American 
battle  had  ended  in  a  compromise.  As  they  could  not  get 
their  special  candidates  appointed,  they  had  agreed  that  it 
was  safest  to  have  a  nonentity.  The  Federal  Government 
had  certainly  granted  them  this  favour. 


CHAPTER   VI 

AMID   THE   PA-LACES   OF   THE    ITZAS 

BY  all  means  let  the  sluggard  go  to  the  ant,  if  he  feels 
equal  to  the  journey  ;  but  on  no  account  let  him  go  to 
Yucatan.  For  if  he  ever  arrived  at  Merida  he  would  never 
get  further.  It  is  only  the  early  bird  which  catches  a  Yucate- 
can  train.  Bradshaw  would  find  himself  in  Yucatan  one  of 
the  unemployed,  for  there  is  no  need  of  railway  tables.  All 
Yucatecan  trains  start  at  dawn,  one  from  each  terminus, 
east,  south,  and  west.  With  the  rising  of  the  sun  there  is 
a  setting  of  railway  activity,  the  only  remaining  excitement 
of  the  day  being  the  reception  of  the  incoming  train  from 
east,  south,  or  west,  which  has  also  started  at  dawn.  Early 
rising  is  accounted  a  virtue  in  most  countries  ;  in  Yucatan 
it  has  become  a  vice.  It  may  have  something  to  do  with 
sleeping  in  hammocks.  Everybody,  rich  and  poor,  sleeps 
in  hammocks  in  Yucatan,  and  until  the  last  year  or  two 
a  bedstead,  even  in  Merida,  was  scarcely  known  as  a  curio, 
and  even  now  the  few  existing  are  restricted  to  the  hotel  and 
one  or  two  American  houses.  For  even  the  energetic  to  get 
out  of  a  bedstead  "  with  the  sun  "  is  an  undertaking,  an  enter- 
prise, demanding  real  moral  courage  and  iron  will-power. 
But  the  hanunock  is  so  different.  You  give  a  sharp  twist 
of  the  body  to  the  left,  raise  your  feet  clear  of  the  blanket, 
and,  before  you  know  where  you  are,  you  are  up,  or,  to  speak 
more  accurately,  you  are  down,  for  there  are  falls  in  plenty 
for  the  uninitiated  in  hammock-sleeping.  But  whether  it  is 
due  to  hammocks  or  not  the  Yucatecans  are  all  early  birds, 
though  they  seem  to  have  no  designs  on  the  early  worms  ;  for 
they  simply  sit  about  in  the  dark  and  shudder  with  cold. 

The  stars  were  still  bright  and  it  was  pitch  dark  when, 
cursing  the  unearthly  hours  of  Yucatecan  railways,  we 
tumbled  out  of  our  beds  and  into  our  top  boots  on  the  morning 
of  our  leaving  Merida.    There  are  many  pleasanter  occupa- 

82 


AMID   THE    PALACES   OF   THE    ITZAS  83 

tions  than  putting  the  finishing  touches  to  one's  baggage  for 
a  long  journey  in  the  wilds  in  a  gloom  which  is  almost  Cim- 
merian. The  worst  of  the  Yucatecans  is  that,  having  forced 
you,  by  the  intemperance  of  their  railway  methods,  to  leave 
your  bed,  they  do  nothing  for  you  in  the  way  of  providing  food. 
Though  the  barbarians  are  all  up  themselves  and  the  markets 
opening,  you  could  not  get  a  square  meal  for  love  or  money. 
We  were  due  to  catch  the  dawn  train  going  eastward,  and  the 
irritabihty  bom  of  dressing  in  the  dark  had  developed  into 
a  sullen  despair  by  the  time  we  reached  the  station.  It  was 
deadly  cold,  that  penetrating  coldness  which  is  typical  of  the 
tropics  before  dawn,  and,  as  the  little  ramshackle  train  jolted 
through  the  suburbs,  we  wondered  at  the  obstinacy  of  a 
people  who  will  get  up  early  and  will  not  breakfast. 

This  eastern  railway,  which  now  runs  as  far  as  Valladohd — 
a  small  place  which  we  shall  describe  later — had  only  just 
been  completed  on  our  arrival  in  Yucatan.  Its  total  length 
is  some  eighty  miles.  At  first  the  scenery  was  much  what 
we  had  seen  in  our  journey  from  the  coast.  Desolate,  flat, 
stony  country,  all  grey  walls  and  henequen.  After  about 
ten  miles  of  this,  the  httle  ill-laid  single  line  enters  the  forest, 
which  it  thereafter  never  leaves,  except  at  the  clearings  for  the 
stations.  Some  of  these  are  primitive  enough,  the  platforms 
merely  mounds  banked  up  at  the  side  of  the  rail.  The  monotony 
of  the  journey  was  broken  by  one  or  two  humorous  incidents. 
The  slowness  of  Yucatecan  trains  is  such  as  to  make  applicable 
Artemus  Ward's  sarcastic  suggestion  in  regard  to  the  American 
trains  of  old  times,  "  that  it's  no  use  having  a  cow-catcher 
on  the  engine,  for  we  shall  never  catch  up  a  cow.  It  ought  to 
be  at  the  rear  to  prevent  the  cows  from  boarding  the  train 
and  biting  the  passengers."  We  did  not  literally  face  this 
peril,  but  we  did  suffer  the  indignity  of  being  chased  by  a 
pack  of  barking  dogs,  and  at  one  point  we  had  to  slow  down 
for  a  herd  of  cattle  which  had  blundered  from  the  woods  on 
to  the  track  and  galloped,  tails  in  the  air,  in  front  of  the  engine 
for  about  five  miles.  After  we  had  been  delayed  for  some 
time,  further  on,  by  the  wood  fuel,  stored  on  the  tender  of  the 
engine,  catching  fire,  we  eventually  reached  Citas,  whence  it  is 
some  eighteen  miles  through  the  forests  to  the  famous  ruins 
of  Chichen  Itza.  Citas  is  a  dirty  village  with  a  large  church. 
There  is  something  pathetic  about  Yucatan's  churches. 
They  are  all  too  big  for  their  towns,  and  look  as  much  out  of 
it  as  a  boy  of  sixteen  at  a  child's  party.    The  smallest  village 


84  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

in  civilised  Yucatan  always  possesses  a  large  church  and  a 
small  official  with  a  big  name,  el  Jefe  politico,  "  the  political 
Chief,"  a  kind  of  mayor  without  the  sables  and  the  chain  of 
office.  Citas's  mayor  had  very  little  on  but  a  panama  hat 
and  a  shirt,  but  he  was  an  intelligent  fellow  to  whom,  as 
strangers  in  a  strange  land,  we  felt  gratitude,  for  he  had 
provided  horses  and  an  Indian  guide. 

It  was  our  first  experience  of  a  Yucatecan  road,  and  we 
were  not  impressed.  Even  the  best  roadways  resemble  a 
Scotch  trout  stream  with  the  water  dried  up.  Ledges  of 
rock  a  foot  or  more  high  ;  stretches,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  at  a 
time,  covered  with  boulders  but  a  few  inches  apart,  make 
riding  an  absorbing  exercise.  The  horses  of  Yucatan  have 
learnt  to  take  matters  quietly  (they  certainly  would  not  last 
a  week  if  they  fussed),  and  your  mount  will  balance  himself 
on  a  rocky  promontory,  like  a  chamois,  and  deliberately  look 
about  for  the  best  place  for  his  next  hoof-step.  A  hold  on 
the  rein  in  case  of  a  stumble,  but  no  steering,  is  the  best  rule 
for  the  rider  in  Yucatan.  If  you  try  to  steer  your  mount,  you 
come  to  grief  four  out  of  five  times  ;  he  knows  best.  The 
light  was  fading  with  tropical  quickness  as  we  rode  through 
the  Indian  village  of  Piste,  a  ruinous  settlement,  thrice  the 
scene  of  battles  and  raidings  in  the  native  wars  of  last  century. 
Thence  less  than  a  league  lies  Chichen,  and  the  road,  deep 
embowered  in  trees,  looked  like  a  cavern's  mouth  ahead  of  us 
till  the  moon  rose. 

We  had  been  riding  forty  minutes  or  so,  when  of  a  sudden 
the  trees  parted.  Looming  up,  momentarily  blotting  out 
moon  and  sky,  rose  a  mighty  pyramid,  rearing  its  vast  mass 
of  ink-black  shadow  into  the  silver  sky.  As  we  rode  towards 
its  western  shoulder,  the  moon  touched  with  a  glinting  light 
the  flat  stones  of  its  southern  slope  and  struck  on  the  huge 
plinths  and  door-lintels  of  the  temple  which  crowned  it. 
Around  us,  as  our  eyes  became  used  to  the  light,  we  saw, 
rising  gaunt  above  the  tree-tops,  the  crumbling  walls  and 
fagades  of  palaces  and  temples.  It  was  Chichen  !  Chichen 
the  magnificent !  and  this  the  "  Taj  Mahal "  of  Central 
America,  down  the  steep  steps  of  which  the  solemn  procession 
of  priests  and  victims  had  passed  in  their  journey  to  the 
scene  of  the  sacrifice  !  Reining  in  our  horses,  we  sat  there 
gazing  up  at  this  grand  relic  of  a  dead  people.  Instinctively, 
one  almost  held  one's  breath  ;  there  was  something  so  sublime, 
so  awe-inspiring  in  this  imperishable  monument  to  perishable 


EL   CASTILLO,    CHICKEN   ITZA. 


p.  84] 


AMID   THE    PALACES    OF   THE    ITZAS  85 

gods.  What  did  it  all  mean  ?  The  tyrant  priests,  majestic 
in  their  bejewelled  and  befeathered  robes,  standing  at  the 
head  of  those  now  crumbling  steps,  with  suppUcatory  hands 
uphfted  to  the  starUt  heavens ;  the  mighty  lord  of  the 
Itzas,  at  whose  command  tens  of  thousands  had  toiled  at  the 
building  for  years  in  the  blistering  sunhght ;  the  gods,  to 
appease  whom  the  blood  of  human  victims  had  perchance 
flowed  in  rivers  before  their  grotesque  idols ;  all  dead, 
unutterably  dead,  impotent,  discredited  !  As  we  sat  there, 
from  the  dark  woods  echoed  the  weird  long-drawn  cry  of  the 
Mayan  night-jar — the  puhuy — like  a  spirit-wail  over  the 
fallen  race. 

The  history  of  Chichen  Itza  before  the  arrival  of  the 
Spaniards  is  as  vague  and  as  untrustworthy  as  all  else  con- 
cerning the  ancient  Mayans.  In  a  later  chapter  we  shall 
review  the  evidence  available  as  to  the  date  of  its  building. 
M.  Desir6  Chamay  labours  needlessly  to  prove  that  the  city 
was  inhabited  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest.  Of  that,  at  least, 
there  is  no  doubt.  Even  if  no  credence  could  be  given  to  the 
report  of  the  expedition  thither  of  the  elder  Montejo  in  1528, 
there  is  a  sufficiency  of  Spanish  documentary  evidence  to  show 
that  the  city  was  not  only  inhabited,  but  the  centre  of  a  vast 
and  powerful  population  in  the  'twenties  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  truth  of 
Montejo's  account  of  his  sojourn  there  which  has  been  outlined 
in  Chapter  III.  He  found  Chicher  the  metropohs  of  the  vast 
tribe  of  the  Itzas.  The  Spanish  historian  Herrera  asserts  that 
Montejo  had  a  return  of  the  population  taken  with  a  view  to 
apportioning  the  Indians  among  his  soldiers  as  slaves,  and 
that  each  Spaniard  became  master  of  between  two  and  three 
thousand.  Montejo's  troops  possibly  numbered  on  his  arrival 
at  Chichen  some  350,  and  this  would  make  the  census  of 
Indians  work  out  at  something  like  a  million.  This  is  obvi- 
ously a  gross  exaggeration,  for  even  if  there  was  any  evidence 
that  Montejo  succeeded  so  completely  in  subjugating  the 
Itzas  as  to  be  able  to  enslave  them,  we  are  quite  certain  from 
a  careful  personal  survey  of  the  district,  that  the  country 
around  never  could  have  supported,  any  more  than  it  could 
to-day  support,  so  many  inhabitants. 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  thoroughly  clear  that  though 
Montejo  succeeded  in  making  a  lodgment  at  Chichen  and 
possessed  himself  of  the  principal  buildings,  occupying  these 
for  something  like  two  years,  the  vast  horde  of  Indians  were 


86  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

not  in  any  sense  conquered,  but  had  simply  temporarily  with- 
dra\vn  into  the  surrounding  woods  and  village  suburbs  of  the 
city.  Unable  in  the  face  of  firearms  to  recapture  their 
palaces,  the  natives  played  a  waiting  game,  setting  about 
slowly  but  surely  to  starve  the  Spaniards  into  submission. 
Weakened  by  months  of  privation,  with  every  square  mile 
of  woodland  thick  with  his  enemies,  Montejo's  position  be- 
came at  last  desperate,  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  but 
to  evacuate  the  city.  This  was  done  in  a  picturesque  way. 
Choosing  a  dark  night,  Montejo  collected  his  men,  keeping 
the  sentries  on  the  walls  till  the  last  moment,  and  then,  muffling 
with  cloths  the  horses'  hoofs,  he  tied  a  dog  to  the  bell-rope 
attached  to  the  clapper  of  a  bell,  putting  a  piece  of  meat  a  few 
feet  away,  but  just  out  of  his  reach.  Stealthily  the  war- 
worn Spaniards  moved  off  into  the  woods,  and  naturally,  as 
the  dog  saw  them  going,  he  pulled  at  the  rope,  thus  ringing 
the  bell.  When  they  were  actually  out  of  sight  the  dog 
presumably  scented  the  meat,  and  thereafter  throughout  the 
night  made  efforts  to  reach  it,  ringing  the  bell  the  while.  This 
ruse  entirely  succeeded,  the  Indians  believing  their  enemies 
still  in  camp ;  and  it  was  not  until  their  suspicions  were  aroused 
by  the  continuous  ringing  of  the  bell  until  dawn  that  they 
approached  the  buildings  and  found  them  deserted.  But 
it  was  too  late,  and  the  Spaniards  on  their  horses  were  able 
to  make  good  their  escape  to  the  coast. 

At  the  hacienda  a  kindly  welcome  awaited  us  from  Mr. 
Edward  Thompson,  Consul-General  for  America  in  Yucatan, 
who  has  for  some  years  been  the  owner  of  the  property.  A 
keen  archaeologist,  he  pluckily  entered  into  possession  of  the 
estate  some  fifteen  years  ago  when  the  neighbourhood  had 
long  earned  an  unenviable  reputation.  The  last  two  hacien- 
dados  and  their  families  had  been  massacred  by  the  revolted 
Indians  and  the  house  pillaged.  Even  to-day  Chichen, 
which  practically  stands  on  the  borderland  of  the  disaffected 
eastern  district  of  the  Peninsula,  is  not  as  peaceful  as  it  looks. 
A  fortnight  before  our  arrival  a  village  some  thirty  miles  oft 
called  Xocen  had  been  raided  and  burnt.  But  these  out- 
breaks do  not  distress  Mr.  Thompson,  whose  sympathies  are 
with  the  Indians,  and  who,  speaking  Maya  like  one  of  them, 
is  beloved  by  all  around.  An  experienced  traveller  himself, 
Mr.  Thompson  gained  our  hearts  at  once  by  introducing  us, 
as  soon  as  our  greetings  were  over,  to  a  palm-thatched  bath- 
house in  his  garden,  where  in  a  stone  trough  we  revelled  for 


AMID   THE   PALACES    OF    THE    ITZAS  87 

some  time  in  the  pleasures  of  cold  water  after  our  dusty, 
burning  ride. 

With  the  dawn  we  were  up  and  out  at  El  Castillo,  to  use 
the  stupid  Spanish  name  of  the  great  pyramid.  It  loses  none 
of  its  majesty  in  the  dayhght.  It  is  a  truncated  pjnramid 
close  on  100  feet  high,  squared  almost  to  the  four  cardinal 
points,  but  not,  we  believe,  orientated  ;  the  northern  side 
being  the  front  because  in  that  direction  lies  the  Sacred 
Cenote  which  we  shall  describe  in  a  moment.  The  four  base 
lines  are  each,  as  near  as  can  be,  200  feet  long.  On 
each  of  the  four  sides  were  gigantic  staircases.  That  on  the 
west,  still  in  fair  preservation,  up  which  we  must  climb 
directly,  is  37  feet  wide.  That  on  the  north  was  44,  but  this 
latter  and  that  on  the  east  are  so  entirely  destroyed  as  to  be 
barely  traceable.  The  stairs  on  the  south,  about  40  feet  wide, 
are  much  broken  and  overgrown  by  cactus  and  shrub.  The 
pjTamid  is  built  of  rubble  and  earth,  and  was  completely 
faced  with  flat-hewn  slabs  of  limestone  about  5  feet  by  4 
and  4  to  6  inches  thick.  In  places  these  are  still  in 
position.  This  is  particularly  the  case  with  the  south  front. 
The  four  comers  were  evidently  once  dressed  with  rounded 
stone  blocks  from  top  to  bottom. 

It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  magnificent  app)earance 
the  mound  must  have  once  presented.  The  stairways,  which 
are  so  steep  as  to  appear  in  some  places  almost  perpendicular, 
were  balustraded,  each  balustrade  ending  on  the  ground  in 
those  gigantic  carved  stone  serpent-heads,  the  jaws  wide  gaping, 
which  we  find  again  and  again  in  Mayan  ruins.  The  climb 
of  the  120  steps,  on  the  average  about  9  inches  high  and  8 
broad,  is  an  undertaking  before  which  any  one  not  a  practised 
Alpine  chmber  might  be  excused  for  quailing.  Pausing  for 
breath  at  the  eightieth  step  and  lookmg  downwards,  your 
head  reels ;  for  the  edges  of  the  steps  appear  to  merge  into 
one  another  by  reason  of  their  steepness,  giving  one  the  feel- 
ing of  being  perched,  fly-Hke,  on  the  face  of  a  grey  cliff.  On 
reaching  the  top  step,  a  few  feet  of  platform  separates  you 
from  the  temple.  Climbing  as  you  have  been  from  the  western 
side,  the  real  one-time  grandeur  of  the  sanctuary  does  not 
strike  you.  It  is  not  the  front,  and  you  must  pass  to  the 
north,  where  was  the  state  entrance  to  the  Holy  of  Holies. 
This  is  20  feet  wide  and  the  lintel  of  the  gigantic  door- 
way is  supported  by  two  pillars,  8i  feet  high,  carved  with 
a  snake  pattern   and    once  ending  at  the  base  in  snakes' 


88  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

heads,  open-mouthed,  the  now  empty  eye-sockets  having 
once  been  filled  with  brilliantly  pamted  stone  or  pieces 
of  polished  jade.  These  heads  are  broken  up,  and  only 
enough  remained  for  the  tutored  eye  to  reconstruct  the  whole. 
Entering,  you  are  in  a  now  roofless  room  running  the  full 
length  of  the  building  east  to  west,  40  feet  long  and  6  broad. 
In  front  of  you  is  a  second  doorway,  its  massive  doorposts 
carved  with  life-sized  figures  of  warriors  in  full  ceremonial 
dress.  By  this  you  enter  the  central  room,  20  feet  by  12. 
Two  piUars,  each  i  foot  10  inches  square,  carved  on  every 
side  with  life-sized  figures  of  warriors  or  priests  in  feathered 
costumes,  support  beams  of  sapota  wood,  once  carved,  but 
now  too  decayed  to  permit  of  the  designs  being  traced. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  building  formed  a  temple. 
The  religious  nature  of  the  Castillo  must  be  indubitable  to  any 
one  standing  in  front  of  it.  Whether  the  bloody  rites  which 
are  known  to  have  been  celebrated  by  Moctezuma's  people 
in  honour  of  Huitzopochtli,  God  of  War,  on  the  pyramids  of 
Mexico  had  their  equivalent  on  Chichen's  mound  is  a  very 
different  matter.  There  is  really  no  proof  for  or  against. 
And  if  it  were  argued  that  the  fact  that  there  is  no  altar  stone 
within,  as  is  the  case,  goes  far  to  prove  that  there  were  no 
such  rites,  there  would  be  no  value  in  such  negative  evidence. 
If  bloody  deeds  in  honour  of  a  Sun-Deity  were  here  enacted, 
possibly  the  flattened  serpents'  heads  at  the  outer  door, 
which  would  have  been  in  view  of  the  congregated  thousands 
on  the  plains  below,  formed  the  butcher-blocks  upon  which 
the  victim's  palpitating  heart,  after  his  breast  had  been  sliced 
open  with  the  silex  knife,  was  torn  from  its  tissues  to  be 
burned  as  an  offering  to  the  god  in  the  inner  Holy  of  Holies  ; 
while  the  body,  scarcely  lifeless,  was  pitched  (as  some  writers 
who  value  the  picturesque  rather  than  the  accurate  would 
like  us  to  believe)  down  the  steps  to  be  sacramentally  eaten 
by  the  worshippers.  On  the  other  three  sides  of  the  building 
runs  a  corridor  6  feet  wide,  three  doors  with  sculptured 
jambs  facing  almost  due  south,  east,  and  west. 

A  woodland  path,  in  places  wide  enough  to  merit  the  title 
of  road,  and  here  and  there  showing  signs  of  an  ancient 
cementing,  leads  from  this  grimly  majestic  shrine  of  fallen 
gods  to  perhaps  the  grimmest  pool  in  the  world.  Yucatan 
is  peculiar  in  being  riverless  and  lakeless.  Rivers  and  lakes 
there  are,  but  these  are  all  subterranean,  generally  from 
fifty  to  two  hundred  feet  beneath  the  surface.     But  dotted 


AMID   THE   PALACES   OF   THE    ITZAS  89 

over  the  Peninsula  are  deep  holes  or  water-caves,  reservoirs 
carved  by  nature  out  of  the  limestone  and  fed  by  these  under- 
ground sources.  For  these  the  Mayan  Indian  name  is  "  cenote," 
and  they  are  often  huge.  Two  of  the  largest  are  at  Chichen. 
Indeed  the  very  name  is  due  to  them  ;  for  "  chi  "  is  "  mouth  " 
and  "  chen  "is  "  wells."  Thus  Chichen  was  the  city  at  the 
"  mouth  of  the  wells." 

But  only  one  of  Chichen's  natural  wells  served  as  water 
supply.  This  flower-bordered  path  we  follow  leads  to  the 
Sacred  Cenote,  round  which  grim  rumours  have  long  col- 
lected ;  rumours  which  it  is  now  our  privilege  to  confirm  as 
facts.  As  we  approach,  the  trees  on  either  side  give  a  denser 
shade.  A  few  yards  further  and  the  path  debouches  into  a 
small  semicircular  space  with  tiers  of  stone  running  round  it 
to  the  left,  suggestive  of  a  tiny  amphitheatre.  In  front  of  you 
is  a  small  stone  building,  one-roomed,  possibly  the  scene  of 
the  penultimate  acts  of  the  terrible  dramas  played  so  many 
centuries  back  in  this  tropic  woodland.  A  step  more  and  you 
are  on  the  brink  !  Hold  the  branch  of  that  sapota  sapling 
fast,  for  the  fall  is  sheer  !  Seventy  feet  below  you  in  a  huge 
limestone  basin,  two  hundred  feet  or  more  in  diameter — so 
nearly  a  perfect  circle  that  as  you  look  into  it  you  find  it  hard 
to  beUeve  it  has  not  been  engineered  by  man,  that  it  has  worn 
thus  from  the  infinitely  slow  corrosive  action  of  the  rainfall 
and  natural  drainage  water — seventy  feet  beneath  you  lies  the 
black,  still  water.  It  is  an  inky  black.  High  above  it  on  the 
limestone  sides  of  the  great  hole  sprawl  ferns,  cactus,  and 
orchid  ;  higher  still,  fringing  its  verge,  thorn-bushes  and  pale- 
green  acacias,  the  grey-barked  sapota,  and  the  heavy-leafed 
ceibo-tree  raise  their  branches  into  the  sunhght.  But  the  sun 
never  touches  that  gruesome,  deadly  still,  pitchy  lake.  Its 
very  glassy  stillness  sends  a  shudder  through  you.  In  its  sepia 
depths  what  wonder  that  Mayan  priest  and  people  saw  the 
home  of  the  terrible  Rain  God,  at  whose  will  the  land  might 
smile  with  plenty  or  the  spectre  of  famine  lay  his  bony  hand 
on  the  shrinking  townsfolk  ? 

From  the  earliest  days  of  the  Spanish  invasion  to  the 
present  time  rumour  has  been  busy  in  circulating  many 
gniesome  stories  of  the  exact  sacrificial  uses  to  which  this  ter- 
rible pothole  in  the  limestone  was  put  by  the  ancient  Mayan 
Indians.  If  Montejo  the  elder,  during  his  stay  at  Chichen  in 
1528,  was  cognisant  of  human  immolation  in  the  cenote,  he 
has  left  no  record  of  it.     But  this  is  no  evidence  that  he  was 


90  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

not,  because,  like  most  of  his  fellow-adventurers  in  the  New 
World,  he  left  no  chronicles  at  all.  The  probability  is,  how- 
ever, that  he  knew  nothing  accurately  and  certainly  witnessed 
no  sacrificial  rites,  for  during  the  foreign  occupation  of  their 
city  the  ritual  of  the  Indians  would  almost  certainly  be  in  abey- 
ance, or  at  any  rate  practised  with  the  utmost  secrecy.  The 
first  actual  written  Spanish  testimony  to  the  sacred  character 
of  the  pool  appears  to  be  that  of  Bishop  Landa  in  his  Relacion 
de  las  Cosas  de  Yucatan  (1556).  He  writes  :  "  A  good  wide 
road  led  to  a  well  into  which  in  times  of  drought  the  natives 
used  to  throw  men,  as  indeed  they  still  do,  as  an  offering  to 
their  deities,  fully  believing  that  they  would  not  die,  even 
though  they  disappeared.  Precious  stones  and  other  valuable 
objects  were  also  offered  ;  and  had  the  country  been  rich  in 
gold,  this  well  would  contain  a  vast  quantity,  because  of  the 
great  veneration  of  the  natives  for  it.  .  .  .  On  its  bank  rises 
a  small  building  filled  with  idols  in  honour  of  all  the  principal 
deities  in  the  country,  exactly  like  the  Pantheon  in  Rome.  I 
cannot  say  whether  this  is  an  ancient  practice  or  an  innovation 
of  the  aborigines,  who  find  here  their  idols  to  which  they  can 
bring  their  offerings,  I  also  found  sculptured  lions,  vases, 
and  other  objects,  which  from  the  manner  they  were  fashioned 
must  have  been  wrought  with  metal  instruments  ;  besides  two 
statues  of  considerable  size  of  one  single  block,  with  peculiar 
heads,  earrings,  and  maxtli  round  their  loins." 

The  bishop's  remarks  were  based,  obviously,  on  an  actual 
visit  he  paid  Chichen  and  upon  such  tittle-tattle  as  he  could 
obtain  from  the  Indian  peasantry.  A  more  serious  notice  of 
the  cenote  is  contained  in  a  report,  clearly  inaccurate  in  detail 
and  based  on  hearsay,  which  was  drawn  up  in  1579  by  the 
Spanish  Governor  of  Valladolid  and  transmitted  to  Madrid. 
It  runs  as  follows  : — 

"  Eight  leagues  from  this  town  stand  some  buildings  called 
Chicheneca.  Among  them  there  is  a  Cu  (Maya  name  for 
pyramid)  made  by  the  hand  of  hewn  stone  and  masonry,  and 
this  is  the  principal  building.  It  has  over  ninety  steps  and 
the  steps  go  all  round  so  as  to  reach  to  the  top  of  it ;  the  height 
of  each  step  is  over  one-third  of  a  vara  ^  high.  On  the  summit 
stands  a  sort  of  tower  with  rooms  in  it.  .  .  .  This  Cu  stands 
between  two  zenotes  of  deep  water.  One  of  them  is  called 
the  Zenote  of  Sacrifice.     They  call  the  place  Chicheneca  after 

1  Vara — a  linear  measure  used  in  Spanish  America,  equal  to  thirty- 
three  English  inches. 


AMID   THE    PALACES   OF   THE    ITZAS  91 

an  Indian  named  Alguin  Itza  who  was  living  at  the  foot  of 
the  Zenote  of  Sacrifice.  At  this  zenote  the  lords  and  chiefs  of 
all  the  province  of  Valladolid  observe  this  custom.  After 
having  feasted  for  sixty  days  without  raising  their  eyes  during 
that  time  even  to  look  at  their  wives  nor  at  those  who  brought 
them  food,  they  came  to  the  mouth  of  the  zenote  and  at  the 
break  of  day  they  threw  into  it  some  Indian  women,  some 
belonging  to  each  of  the  lords,  and  they  told  the  women  that 
they  should  beg  for  a  good  year  in  all  those  things  which  they 
thought  fit,  and  thus  they  cast  them  in  unbound ;  but  as  they 
were  thrown  headlong  in  they  fell  into  the  water,  giving  a 
great  blow  on  it  ;  and  exactly  at  midday  she,  who  was  able 
to  come  out,  cried  out  loud  that  they  should  throw  her  a  rope 
to  drag  her  out  with,  and  she  arrived  at  the  top  half  dead, 
and  they  made  great  fires  around  her  and  incensed  her  with 
copal,  and  when  she  came  to  herself  she  said  that  below  there 
were  many  of  her  nation,  both  men  and  women,  who  received 
her,  and  that  raising  her  head  to  look  at  some  of  them  they 
gave  her  heavy  blows  on  the  neck,  making  her  put  her  head 
down,  which  was  all  under  water  in  which  she  fancied  were  many 
hollows  and  deeps  ;  and  in  answer  to  the  questions  which 
the  Indian  girl  put  to  them,  they  rephed  to  her  whether  it 
should  be  a  good  or  bad  year,  and  whether  the  devil  was  angry 
with  any  of  the  lords  who  had  cast  in  the  Indian  girls,  but 
these  lords  already  knew  that  if  a  girl  did  not  beg  to  be  taken 
up  at  midday  it  was  because  the  devil  was  angry  with  them, 
and  she  never  came  out  again.  Then  seeing  that  she  did 
not  come  out,  all  the  followers  of  that  lord  and  the  lord  himself 
threw  great  stones  into  the  water  and  with  loud  cries  fled  from 
the  place." 

During  the  succeeding  centuries  there  is  no  record  of  any 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  Spaniards  to  solve  the  mystery  sur- 
rounding the  well.  This  is  not  at  all  surprising,  for  from  the 
first  they  took  no  kind  of  interest  in  questions  affecting  the 
Indian  past  of  the  country,  and  their  innate  avarice  was  not 
awakened  by  any  well-founded  suggestion  that  jewels  and  the 
precious  metals  had  been  cast  as  offerings  into  the  cenote. 
The  mineral  poverty  of  Yucatan  was  so  obvious  as  not  to 
permit  of  such  a  belief  gaining  currency,  as  is  clear  from  the 
quotation  given  above  from  Bishop  Landa.  But  there  was 
another  and  a  stronger  reason  why  the  pool  should  hold  its 
secret  fast.  This  was  the  extraordinary  mechanical  difficulty 
of  dredging  operations.     As  has  been  said,  the  height  from 


92  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  brink  of  the  cenote  to  the  water-level  is  seventy  feet,  and  the 
basin  is  a  complete  and  precipitous  circle  all  round  ;  there 
thus  being  no  means  of  reaching  the  water  except  by  some 
elaborate  contrivance  of  a  crane  nature.  M.  D.  Charnay  in 
1881  provided  himself,  in  anticipation  of  his  visit  to  Chichen 
with  two  automatic  sounding  machines,  one  of  which  was 
capable  of  bringing  up  half  a  cubic  metre  deposit.  Owing, 
however,  to  the  height  of  the  cenote  walls,  the  depth  of  the 
water,  and  the  enormous  detritus  of  centuries,  he  could  do 
nothing.  It  has  been  reserved  for  our  good  friend  Mr.  Edward 
Thompson,  whose  earnestness  is  only  matched  by  his  persist- 
ence and  his  contempt  for  difficulties,  to  wrest  from  this  ugly 
hole  the  full  measure  of  its  secrets.  Some  twelve  months  back 
he  had  set  up  an  elaborate  crane  apparatus  worked  by  hand- 
winches  which,  projecting  considerably  over  the  cenote,  and 
moving  in  a  large  half-circle,  supported  a  heavy  iron  dredger. 
By  means  of  this  machinery  dredging  over  the  whole  surface 
of  the  well-bottom  has  been  done  to  a  considerable  depth. 

The  water,  regarded  still  by  the  superstitious  Indians  as 
fathomless,  is  at  present  thirty  feet  deep,  but  was  probably 
deeper  once.  The  dredging  operations  have  disclosed  the 
bottom  of  the  cenote  to  be  an  accumulation  of  earth  and  vege- 
table refuse,  into  which  Mr.  Thompson  has  been  able  to  probe 
to  the  depth  of  over  thirty  feet.  These  investigations  have  once 
and  for  all  established  the  fact  that  the  pool  was  the  scene  of 
countless  human  sacrifices.  The  quantity  of  skulls  and  bones 
brought  up  by  the  dredger  admits  of  no  other  explanation. 
For  if  it  was  urged,  as  it  may  be,  that  such  "  finds  "  point 
possibly  to  the  cenote  having  been  put  to  a  sepulchral  use, 
the  answer  is  provided  by  the  character  of  the  skulls  and  bones. 
In  a  pool  which  was  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  national  Valhalla 
the  majority  of  the  skeletons  would  almost  certainly  be  those 
of  men,  and  men,  too,  of  advanced  age,  chiefs  and  war-worn 
tribal  heroes.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  With  scarcely  any 
exceptions,  the  bones  are  those  of  the  young.  We  were 
privileged  by  the  courtesy  of  Mr.  Thompson  to  see  and  handle 
many  of  the  skulls,  and  our  examination  of  them  satisfied  us 
that  they  were  one  and  all  those  of  young  females  between 
twelve  and  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  disarticulated  bones  all 
exhibited  a  like  immaturity  and  sex.  From  these  facts  only 
one  deduction  is  possible,  namely  that  sacrifices  in  the  cenote 
did  occur,  and  that  such  sacrifices  were  of  young  girls  who 
were   hurled  by  the  priests   into   the  chasm,  possibly    after 


AMID    THE    PALACES    OF   THE    ITZAS  93 

defilement  by  the  high-priests  in  the  small  building  at  the 
pool's  edge,  thus  symboUsing  the  simultaneous  surrender  of 
virginity  and  life  to  the  Rain  Deity. 

It  is  of  course  impossible  to  say  for  how  many  centuries 
before  the  Spanish  Conquest  this  practice  prevailed,  but  allow- 
ing for  the  natural  tendency  of  the  bodies  to  entirely  decay 
during  anything  like  such  a  vast  period  as  some  writers  would 
suggest  is  represented  by  the  life  of  Chichen  as  a  city,  the 
quantity  of  skulls  found  in  fair  preservation  seems  to  indicate 
a  comparatively  frequent  repetition  of  this  cruel  rite  ;  pro- 
bably many  maids  each  dry  season.  These  grim  mementoes 
of  the  pagan  past  are  not  the  only  "  finds  "  the  cenote  has 
yielded.  While  the  dredging  has  more  than  corroborated 
Bishop  Landa's  supposition  that  the  mineral  poverty  of  Yucatan 
forbade  the  hope  that  countless  ounces  of  gold  and  silver  lay 
hidden  in  the  pool's  muddy  bottom,  many  archiEological  trea- 
sures have  been  recovered.  There  is  much  reason  to  beheve 
that,  aided  by  these,  Mr.  Thompson  will  be  able  to  give  the 
world  an  absorbingly  interesting  reconstruction  of  pre-Conquest 
life  in  Chichen,  pieced  together  with  that  painstaking  zeal 
which  has  distinguished  all  his  previous  work  in  other  parts 
of  Yucatan. 

To  these  "  finds  "  we  shall  have  reason  later  to  refer  more 
in  detail,  but  of  one  thing  we  would  speak  here.  An  enormous 
quantity  of  lumps  of  copal,  a  resin  obtained  from  several  small 
trees  or  shrubs  of  tropical  America  with  compound  dotted 
leaves,  known  to  botanists  as  the  order  of  Burseraceae,  have 
been  dredged  up.  This  copal  was  used  as  incense  in  the  Mayan 
temples,  and  it  is  certain  that  it  was  regarded  as  very  precious, 
for  there  is  evidence  that  tributes  to  overlords  were  paid  by 
vassal  tribes  in  so  much  weight  of  this  resinous  gum.  There 
thus  seems  little  doubt  that  part  of  the  ritual  at  the  cenote 
edge  was  the  casting  in  of  lumps  of  copal  as  offerings  to  the  god, 
and  it  is  more  than  hkely  that  this  custom  is  referred  to  un- 
consciously by  the  Spanish  official  reporting  in  1579,  when 
he  says  that  "  all  the  followers  of  that  lord  and  the  lord  himself 
threw  great  stones  into  the  water  and  with  loud  cries  fled  from 
the  place."  The  pieces  of  copal  recovered  are  in  some  cases 
as  large  as  a  human  head. 

About  one  himdred  and  thirty  yards  to  the  south-west  of 
the  great  pyramid  is  the  building  known  as  the  Tennis-Court. 
Running  north  to  south  are  two  immense  parallel  walls  274  feet 
long,  30  feet  thick,  25  feet  high,  and  120  feet  apart.     At  each 


94  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

end,  some  30  yards  from  the  walls,  stand  buildings  roofless  and 
wall-less  on  the  Tennis-Court  side.  That  on  the  north  still  shows 
traces  of  elaborate  carvings  from  floor  to  roof,  and  on  two 
pillars,  where  was  once  a  doorway,  are  figure  carvings.  The 
building  to  the  south  is  not  so  richly  decorated.  The  clue  to 
the  purpose  of  this  vast  enclosure  is  given  by  a  massive  stone 
ring  projecting  from  the  eastern  wall  20  feet  from  the  ground. 
A  corresponding  one  on  the  west  side  has  fallen  and  lies  among 
the  bushes.  We  found  its  measurements  to  be  3  feet  11  inches 
in  diameter,  11^  inches  thick,  and  the  diameter  of  the  ring- 
hole  I  foot  7  inches.  The  ring  still  in  position  is  obviously 
of  the  same  measurements :  it  can  be  seen  in  the  photograph 
reproduced.  On  the  flat  surface  and  on  its  edges  each  ring 
is  carved  with  two  serpents  intertwined.  These  rings  formed 
an  essential  part  of  a  ball-game,  which  seems  to  have  been 
common  to  the  Mayan  peoples  in  Yucatan  and  the  Aztec 
subjects  of  Moctezuma  in  Mexico.  The  native  name  for  this 
pastime  was  Tlachtli. 

The  Spanish  historian  Herrera,  in  describing  the  amuse- 
ments at  the  Court  of  Moctezuma,  has  a  detailed  account  of 
the  game.  He  writes  (we  follow  the  translation  adopted  by 
J.  L.  Stephens)  :  "  The  King  took  much  dehght  in  seeing  Sport 
at  Ball,  which  the  Spaniards  have  since  prohibited,  because 
of  the  mischief  that  often  happened  at  it ;  and  was  by  them 
called  Tlachtli,  being  like  our  Tennis.  The  ball  was  made  of 
the  gum  of  a  tree  that  grows  in  hot  countries,  which,  having 
holes  made  in  it,  distils  great  white  drops,  that  soon  harden, 
and,  being  worked  and  moulded  together,  turn  as  black  as 
pitch.  The  balls  made  thereof,  though  hard  and  heavy  to 
the  hand,  did  bound  and  fly  as  well  as  our  footballs,  there 
being  no  need  to  blow  them  ;  nor  did  they  use  chaces,^  but 
vy'd  to  drive  the  adverse  party  that  is  to  hit  the  wall,  the 
others  were  to  make  good,  or  strike  it  over.  They  struck  it 
with  any  part  of  their  body,  as  it  hapned,  or  they  could  most 
conveniently  ;  and  sometimes  he  lost  that  touched  it  with 
any  other  part  but  his  hip,  which  was  look'd  upon  among 
them  as  the  greatest  dexterity  ;  and  to  this  effect,  that  the 
ball  might  rebound  the  better,  they  fastened  a  piece  of  stiff 
leather  on  their  hips.  They  might  strike  it  every  time  it 
rebounded,  which  it  would  do  several  times  one  after  another, 
in  so  much  that  it  look'd  as  if  it  had  been  alive.  They  play'd 
in  parties,  so  many  on  a  side,  for  a  load  of  mantles,  or  what 
1  Chaces — an  old-time  form  of  spelling  "  chases." 


AMID   THE    PALACES   OF   THE    ITZAS  95 

the  gamesters  could  afford,  at  so  many  scores.  They  also 
play'd  for  gold,  and  feather-work,  and  sometimes  play'd  them- 
selves away,  as  had  been  said  before.  The  place  where  they 
played  was  a  ground  room,  long,  narrow,  but  wider  above  than 
below  and  higher  on  the  sides  than  at  the  ends,  and  they  kept 
it  very  weU  plastered  and  smooth,  both  the  walls  and  the 
floor.  On  the  side  walls  they  fix'd  certain  stones,  Uke  those 
of  a  mill,  with  a  hole  quite  through  the  middle,  just  as  big  as 
the  ball,  and  he  that  could  strike  it  through  won  the  game  ; 
and  in  token  of  its  being  an  extraordinary  success,  which  rarely 
hapn'd,  he  had  a  right  to  the  cloaks  of  all  the  lookers-on,  by 
antient  custom,  and  law  amongst  gamesters ;  and  it  was  very 
pleasant  to  see,  that  as  soon  as  ever  the  ball  was  in  the  hole, 
the  standers-by  took  to  their  heels,  running  away  with  all  their 
might  to  save  their  cloaks,  laughing  and  rejoicing,  others 
scouring  after  them  to  secure  their  cloaks  for  the  winner,  who 
was  oblig'd  to  offer  some  sacrifice  to  the  idol  of  the  Tennis  Court, 
and  the  stone  through  whose  hole  the  ball  had  pass'd.  Every 
Tennis  Court  was  a  temple,  having  two  idols,  the  one  of  gaming, 
and  the  other  of  the  ball.  On  a  lucky  day,  at  midnight,  they 
perform'd  certain  ceremonies  and  enchantments  on  the  two 
lower  walls  and  on  the  midst  of  the  floor,  singing  certain  songs, 
or  ballads  ;  after  which  a  priest  of  the  great  temple  went  with 
some  of  their  religious  men  to  bless  it ;  he  uttered  some  words, 
threw  the  ball  about  the  Tennis  Court  four  times,  and  then 
it  was  consecrated  and  might  be  play'd  in,  but  not  before. 
The  owner  of  the  Tennis  Court,  who  was  always  a  lord,  never 
play'd  without  making  some  offering  and  performing  certain 
ceremonies  to  the  idol  of  gaming,  which  shows  how  superstitious 
they  were,  since  they  had  such  regard  to  their  idols,  even  in 
their  diversions.  Moctezuma  carry'd  the  Spaniards  to  this 
sport,  and  was  well  pleas'd  to  see  them  play  at  it,  as  also  at 
cards  and  dice." 

This  account  by  Herrera  of  the  temples  surrounding  the 
playground  would  be  as  accurate  if  it  pmported  to  be  a  descrij>- 
tion  of  Chichen  instead  of  Mexico.  The  two  roofless  buildings 
which  we  found  north  and  south  of  the  court  certainly  sug- 
gested temples,  but  a  more  elaborate  confirmation  of  the  re- 
ligious element  in  this  ball-game  is  found  at  the  southern  end 
of  the  eastern  wall,  where  stands  another  building  larger  than 
either  of  those  described.  This  is  called  "  The  Temple  of  the 
Tigers,"  from  a  frieze  design,  marvellously  lifelike,  of  jaguars 
(always  called  tigers  in  Yucatan)  pacing  after  one  another. 


96  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

The  building  is  built  to  the  same  level  as,  and  indeed  forms 
part  of,  the  wall  of  the  Tennis  Court.  Its  position,  with  serpent- 
columned  doorway,  facing  the  arena,  indicates  that  it,  too, 
figured  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  ball-game.  Of  the  front  room 
nothing  remains  but  the  two  columns  and  the  back  wall,  out 
of  which  latter  a  doorway  leads  into  an  inner  apartment.  Here 
are  the  most  remarkable  Mayan  paintings  so  far  discovered. 
They  cover,  or,  to  be  accurate,  they  once  covered  (for  they  are 
much  mutilated),  the  whole  wall  space.  The  colours  used  are 
green,  red,  blue,  a  reddish  brown  (the  colour  of  the  human  skin 
in  all  Mayan  paintings),  and  yellow.  The  designs  are  coarse 
in  outline,  the  colours  are  faded,  the  plaster  is  chipped  ;  but 
the  humanity  of  it  all  holds  you.  The  method  employed  in 
these  mural  paintings  wa'^  that  of  placing  one  layer  of  pigment 
over  another.  Thus  a  green  shield  with  yellow  bosses  studding 
it  was  depicted  by  the  shield  being  first  painted  entirely  over 
with  green,  discs  of  yellow  chalky  pigment  being  then  placed 
on  the  green  background.  This  method,  which  at  the  time 
of  the  actual  painting  obviously  must  have  added  to  the  glow- 
ing realistic  effect,  has  its  grave  disadvantages  in  the  detaching 
of  these  superimposed  layers  of  paint  by  crumbling  during 
the  passage  of  centuries.  Thus  much  of  the  original  skill  of  the 
design  is  for  ever  lost  to  us. 

But  it  is  all  very  human.  Life  as  it  was  lived,  loved  and 
struggled  for  ;  life  with  all  its  work  and  its  play,  its  lights  and 
its  shades  ;  the  drama  of  life  in  those  far-off  Indian  days,  is 
here  pictured  for  you.  The  long-dead  past  lives  again  in  that 
crumbling  fresco.  By  the  magic  of  even  that  crude  draughts- 
manship you  are  transported  back  through  the  centuries  into 
the  living  city.  Close  at  hand  you  seem  to  hear  the  weird 
chanting  of  the  priests,  to  smell  the  resinous  incense  ;  from  the 
steaming  plain  below  rise  the  sounds  of  hut-life,  the  grating  of 
the  stone  rolling-pin  (universal  sound  in  every  Indian  village) 
on  the  metate  or  stone  tray  as  the  housewife  crushes  the  maize, 
the  cries  of  playing  children,  the  barking  of  the  housedogs, 
the  crowing  of  the  cocks.  You  seem  to  catch  the  echo  of  sharp 
words  of  command,  of  the  low,  long-drawn,  grunting  cries  of 
the  toilers  as  they  drag  huge  plinths  up  the  newly  banked 
sides  of  the  pyramid  ;  while  from  the  distant  quarry  comes 
the  incessant  "  tap-tap-tap  "  of  nephrite  chisels  as  the  masons 
shape  the  vast  blocks  of  limestone.  On  the  other  wall  the 
artist  shows  you  warriors,  shields  and  flint-headed  spears  in 
hand,  in  the  full  crash  of  battle  ;  while  above  them  the  women 


AMID   THE    PALACES   OF   THE    ITZAS  97 

have  come  out  upon  the  battlements  of  the  city  to  watch  the 
struggle.  Truly  is  there  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  To  one's 
mind  come  those  lines  of  Matthew  Arnold  : 

"  Men  shall  renew  the  battle  on  the  plain  ; 
To-morrow,  as  it  hath  been,  it  shall  be  ; 
Hector  and  Ajax  shall  be  there  again  ; 
Helen  shall  come  upon  the  walls  to  see." 

Scrambling  down  the  broken  wall  to  the  ground-level,  at 
the  back  of  this  painted  room  is  another  looking  towards  the 
pyramid.  The  back  wall,  all  that  remains,  is  covered  with 
figures  of  warriors  carved  so  closely  that  it  is  hard  to  follow 
the  design  in  the  blaze  of  sunlight. 

But  there  is  one  figure  which  demands  attention.  In 
the  centre  of  this  bas-rehef  is  the  presentment  of  a  man 
who  is  distinguished  from  those  around  by  the  fact  that  he 
wears  a  beard.  This  is  very  curious  and  very  important. 
Beards  were  never  worn  by  the  ancient  Mayan  Indians,  as 
indeed  they  are  never  worn  to-day.  In  fact,  physiologically 
the  Mayan  cannot  grow  a  beard,  or  at  least  a  beard  of 
anything  but  the  mangiest  and  most  scrubby  nature,  a  fact 
which  is  evidence  of  that  Mongolian  blood  which  he  shares 
in  common  with  the  American  Indians  of  the  North  and 
South.  But  beards  are  said  to  have  been  worn  by  the 
priestly  caste  attached  to  the  worship  of  the  Mexican  deity  and 
culture-hero  Quetzalcoatl.  This  divinity,  it  has  been  believed, 
can  be  identified  with  the  Maya  god  Itzamna,  and  this  belief 
certainly  gains  support  from  the  appearance  of  this  bearded 
figure  on  the  sculpture  of  Chichen,  the  work  of  a  beardless 
race. 

In  front,  where  the  doorway  of  this  temple  once  stood, 
are  two  square  carved  pillars,  not  monolithic,  but  built  of 
slabs  a  foot  or  more  thick ;  but  the  topmost  slabs  have  come 
away  and  he  on  the  ground.  Between  these  pillars,  the  back 
hollowed  as  if  for  a  ceremonial  seat,  is  the  much  broken  form 
of  a  tiger  (jaguar).  Between  this  building  and  the  pyramid 
are  heaps  of  fallen  stones,  and  in  the  dense  bush  we  find  and 
photograph  huge  slabs  of  limestone  3  or  4  feet  square  and 
more  than  a  foot  thick,  upon  which  are  carved  quite  brilliantly 
hfelike  representations  of  a  much  bewhiskered  jaguar  and  a 
parrot  eating  a  nut  of  the  mamey  tree.  Among  these  Uttered 
stones  are,  too,  many  serpents'  heads  and  pieces  of  a  curious 
frieze  decorated  with  skulls  and  crossbones. 


98  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Standing  on  the  top  of  the  Castillo  platform,  looking  north- 
eastward, one  sees  shining  white  amid  the  trees  the  pillars 
of  what  is  known  as  the  Temple  of  the  Tables,  so  called  in 
allusion  to  its  chief  feature,  a  series  of  tables,  huge  stone  slabs 
supported  on  Atlantean  figures.  These  latter  are  of  extra- 
ordinary interest.  They  have  the  square,  severe  Egyptian 
headdress  and  fillet,  and  so  closely  resemble  in  features  and 
general  appearance  the  Sphinx-forms  of  Egyptian  mythology 
that  one  starts  back  in  amazement  on  first  seeing  them.  One 
curious  thing,  too,  is  that  a  close  examination  shows  an  ex- 
traordinary diversity  of  feature.  Whoever  the  sculptor  was, 
he  was  not  content  with  producing  a  stereotyped  face,  but 
actually  aimed  at  and  obtained  a  series  which  one  might 
reasonably  guess  to  be  portraits.  But  of  these  squat  figures, 
more  when  we  come  to  our  conclusions  as  to  who  the  Mayans 
were. 

Away  to  the  north  of  the  Castillo,  but  a  few  yards  from 
the  path  which  leads  to  the  Sacred  Cenote,  is  a  small  ruin  known 
as  the  Temple  of  the  Cones,  because  in  front  of  it  are  perhaps 
a  hundred  small  cone-shaped  stones  about  2  to  3  feet  long, 
looking  for  all  the  world  like  the  lo-inch  shells  fired  from 
modern  artillery.  Some  writers  have  found  a  suggestion  of 
phallic  worship  in  these,  but  the  close  inspection  we  made 
convinced  us  this  is  not  the  case. 

To  the  east  of  the  Castillo  in  the  dense  woods  are  an  extra- 
ordinary series  of  short  columns,  the  difficulty  of  explaining 
which  has  so  far  defeated  all  students.  Hundreds  of  these 
columns,  now  broken  and  scattered,  built,  as  all  the  columns 
at  Chichen  are,  of  square  slabs  mortared  on  to  each  other, 
appear  to  have  stood  in  rows  five  or  six  abreast,  and  some 
12  feet  apart  each  from  each,  forming  the  sides  of  an  immense 
square.  These  columns  would  seem  to  have  been  finished  by 
plain  square  capitals  which  lie  about  here  and  there.  The 
most  reasonable  suggestion  offered  in  explanation  of  these 
groups  of  pillars,  none  of  which  evidently  exceeded  6  feet  in 
height,  is  that  of  M.  Charnay,  who  was  at  Chichen  in  1881. 
He  believed  them  to  mark  the  site  of  the  market-place  of  the 
ancient  city,  and  found  in  the  columns  the  supports  for  that 
low  colonnade  which,  he  pointed  out,  was  known  to  have 
bordered  the  market-places  in  Mexico  at  the  time  of  the  Con- 
quest. He  quoted  Clavigero,  who  wrote  :  "In  Mexico  the 
judges  of  the  commercial  tribunal,  twelve  in  number,  held 
their  court  in  the  market  buildings,  where  they  regulated  prices 


AMID    THE    PALACES    OF   THE    ITZAS  99 

and  measures  and  settled  disputes.  Commissioners  acting 
under  their  authority  patrolled  the  market-place  to  prevent 
disorder."  The  position  of  these  strange  columns  at  Chichen, 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  old  city,  as  they  must  have  been,  within 
a  hundred  yards  of  the  Castillo,  certainly  seem  to  support 
M.  Chamay's  guess,  and  there  is  no  difficulty  in  believing  that 
a  large  arcade  supported  by  rows  of  five  columns  abreast  ran 
round  the  market-place  to  afford  shelter  from  the  sun  to  those 
who,  like  the  judges  mentioned  by  Clavigero,  had  by  reason 
of  their  duties  to  be  there  all  day.  M.  Chamay,  however,  does 
not  attempt  to  explain  what  has  become  of  the  roof  of  such 
arcade,  for  there  is  no  sign  of  it  among  the  littered  stones. 
The  explanation  undoubtedly  is  that  the  roof  would  have  been 
formed  not  of  stone  but  of  a  framework  of  light  beams  thatched 
with  palm-leaves,  the  thatch  periodically  renewed,  as  is  the 
case  to-day  with  every  Indian  hut  where  the  thatching  lasts 
little  more  than  a  year.  This  roofing  of  the  arcade  would  have 
of  course  long  ago  entirely  rotted  away. 

In  the  woods  to  the  south-east  of  the  Castillo  are  a  series 
of  ruins  which,  while  intrinsically  interesting,  are  perhaps  of 
most  value  in  the  discussion  as  to  the  actual  age  of  Chichen. 
We  shall  refer  to  them  in  a  later  chapter,  and  at  present  would 
content  ourselves  with  saying  that  we  believe  them  to  represent 
an  older  Chichen  than  that  which  flourished  at  the  time  of 
Montejo's  visit.  They  consist  of  a  series  of  mounds  some 
30  feet  high,  crowned  with  now  ruined  buildings.  In  their 
midst  are  two  temples.  The  first  is  very  remarkable.  Its  roof 
has  gone,  but  the  majestic  carved  pillars,  10  feet  high,  which 
supported  it  are  still  for  the  most  part  in  position.  Here  Mr. 
Thompson  recently  unearthed  a  life-sized  recumbent  statue 
of  the  Chacmool  type  to  which  a  reference  was  made  in  our 
description  of  the  Museum  at  Mexico  City.  Its  head  is  half 
turned,  and  its  features  and  headdress  are  those  of  the  Atlan- 
tean  statuettes.  A  hollow  in  the  body  between  the  navel 
and  ribs,  three  inches  wide  by  three-quarters  of  an  inch  deep, 
suggests  a  receptacle  for  incense-burning  ;  the  figure  probably 
being  altar  and  idol  combined. 

To  the  immediate  south  of  this,  with  the  walls  nearly  ad- 
joining, is  a  second  temple,  now  roofless.  Against  its  southern 
wall  stand  three  carved  pillars  some  10  feet  high,  but  the  pecu- 
liar feature  is  a  platform  3  feet  high  and  5  feet  wide  and  12  feet 
long  on  the  north  side  which  has  all  the  appearance  of  an  altar ; 
while  a  second  feature,  which  we  saw  nowhere  else  in  Yucatan, 


100  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

was  a  terraced  ledge  at  the  eastern  end  about  4  feet  wide  run- 
ning the  full  width  of  the  building  and  approached  in  its  north- 
east corner  by  a  flight  of  five  stone  steps  well  laid.  Still  further 
to  the  south  of  these  twin  temples  were  two  mounds  parallel 
to  each  other  about  50  yards  apart.  Owing  to  the  dense  growth 
of  bush  accurate  measurements  were  difficult ;  but  each  ap- 
peared to  be  between  40  and  50  feet  long,  20  feet  wide,  and 
25  to  30  feet  high.  Excavations  on  the  second  one  showed 
three  small  stone  houses,  apparently  communicating. 

In  the  woods  to  the  south  of  the  Castillo  are  a  group  of 
large  and  well-preserved  ruins.  First  the  "  Red  House,"  a 
literal  translation  of  the  Indian  name  Chichanchob,  in  allusion 
to  the  extensive  colouring  of  the  inner  walls.  The  building, 
which  is  43  feet  long  and  23  deep  and  has  a  richly  ornamented 
cornice,  stands  on  a  low  mound  62  feet  long  and  50  odd  wide, 
approached  by  a  stairway  20  feet  wide.  It  has  three  doors 
admitting  to  a  room  running  the  full  length  of  the  building  ; 
and  out  of  this  again  there  are  three  doors  to  three  inner  rooms. 
Along  the  top  of  the  wall  of  the  front  room  runs  a  tablet  covered 
with  two  lines  of  hieroglyphics.  They  are  much  worn,  and 
we  found  it  impossible  to  get  a  satisfactory  mould  of  them. 
The  paints  on  the  walls  are  still  vivid,  but  no  pattern  is  trace- 
able ;  the  only  striking  feature  being  that  "  red  hand,"  which 
we  found  in  far  better  preservation  at  a  city  we  discovered 
some  months  later  in  the  island  of  Cozumel,  and  of  which  we 
shall  write  later. 

To  the  south-east  of  the  Chichanchob  is  a  most  puzzling 
building,  unique  as  far  as  Yucatan  is  concerned.  The  Caracol, 
or  "  Winding  Staircase,"  stands  on  two  rectangular  stone- 
faced  terraces  reached  by  steps.  The  lower  terrace  measures 
220  feet  north  to  south,  150  feet  east  to  west,  and  is  20  feet 
high.  The  masonry  is  very  rough,  and  may  have  been  plastered. 
At  one  end  are  the  remains  of  four  small  pillars,  and  around 
the  building  we  found  at  intervals  carved  heads  hollowed  in 
the  crowns  to  serve  as  incense-burners.  The  stairs  are  on 
the  west  side,  and  are  45  feet  wide  ;  the  broken  remains  we 
found  suggested  there  had  been  serpent  balustrades.  The 
second  or  upper  terrace  is  60  feet  east  to  west,  80  north  to  south, 
and  12  feet  high ;  the  steps  being  a  continuation  of  the  lower 
flight.  The  building  is  a  large  squat  turret  of  about  40  feet 
diameter  and  about  25  in  height.  Upon  this  turret  a  smaller 
one,  now  largely  fallen,  stood.  The  main  turret  consists 
of  two  concentric  walls,  enclosing  two  annular  rooms  and  a 


THE    CARACOL    ("  WINDING   STAIRCASE  "),    CHICHEN    ITZA. 


THE    TENNIS    COURT,    CHICHEN    ITZA. 


p.  lOO] 


AMID    THE    PALACES    OF    THE    ITZAS  loi 

circular  core  or  pillar.  The  walls  are  some  2  feet  thick.  There 
are  four  doorways  facing  the  cardinal  points  of  the  compass  in 
the  outer,  and  four  facing  the  sub-cardinal  points  in  the  inner, 
wall.  The  core  is  about  7  feet  thick  at  the  floor-level  and 
8  feet  at  ceiUng.  The  roof  of  each  of  these  annular  rooms  ends 
in  a  very  pointed  arch.  Facing  the  north-east  door  is  a  small 
opening  in  the  core  about  4  feet  from  the  floor  and  measuring 
about  28  by  24  inches.  J.  L.  Stephens  in  1842  abandoned 
the  attempt  to  explore  this,  but  we  were  luckier.  By  a 
total  disregard  of  our  clothes  and  of  the  probability  that  the 
passage  sheltered  at  least  one  rattlesnake,  we  squirmed  through 
and  came  out  at  the  side  of  the  topmost  turret  some  10  feet 
from  the  top.  Undoubtedly  this  was  once  a  stairway,  for  we 
could  feel  (it  was  too  dark  to  see)  the  broken  edges  of  the 
steps.  It  is  reasonable  to  surmise  that  this  unique  winding- 
stair  building  was  in  the  nature  of  an  observatory,  though 
whether  in  connection  with  Sun  or  Star  worship  it  is  of  course 
impossible  to  say. 

To  the  south  of  the  Caracol  stands  a  ruin  of  remarkable 
beauty  and  in  wonderful  preservation.  The  Spaniards  called 
it  "  La  Casa  de  las  Monjas  "  (Nims'  House),  and  there  is  much 
reason  to  believe  that  this  is  a  thoroughly  appropriate  title, 
and  that  this  building  did  actually  house  those  virgins  of  noble 
birth  of  whose  dedication  to  religious  uses  we  shall  have  to 
speak  at  some  length  in  a  later  chapter,  when  reviewing  the 
whole  subject  of  Mayan  religion.  The  peculiar  feature  of  the 
building  is  the  manner  of  erection.  Apparently  at  first  it 
stood  on  a  solid  foundation  of  masonry  30  feet  high  and  of 
the  same  size  as  the  building  itself  except  to  the  north,  where 
there  was  a  platform  30  feet  wide.  At  some  period,  whether 
during  erection  or  after  completion  it  is  impossible  to  tell, 
the  architect  must  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
building  was  top-heavy,  and  decided  to  strengthen  it  by  con- 
tinuing the  northern  platform  all  round.  This  new  wall  was 
not  spliced  and  mortised  into  the  other  as  one  would  expect. 
A  wall  was  built  to  the  outer  dimensions  of  the  support  only 
2  feet  thick,  and  the  space  between  this  and  the  main  building 
was  jSlled  up  with  rubble  and  loose  building  waste.  The 
abutment  on  the  northern  side,  down  which  thirty-four  steps 
lead  to  ground-level,  was  built  in  the  same  manner,  giving 
it  an  unsubstantial  lean-to  appearance.  But  we  shall  have 
more  to  say  upon  this  mode  of  buUding  when  attempting 
to  date  these  structures  in  a  later  chapter. 


102  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

The  buildings  on  the  platform  are  two  in  number.  The 
larger  is  104  feet  long  and  30  wide,  and  contains  seven  rooms, 
the  largest  on  the  south  side  measuring  47  feet  by  9  feet  wide, 
its  inner  walls  bearing  traces  of  figure  paintings  from  floor  to 
roof.  The  space  on  the  northern  side  corresponding  to  this 
room  has  apparently  been  filled  up.  The  niches  for  the 
doorways  exist,  but  they  are  sealed  to  the  lintel  with  masonry, 
whether  because  sepulchral  or  to  give  support  to  the  building 
above,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  On  either  side  of  this  closed 
space  are  two  smaller  rooms  and  two  more  in  corresponding 
places  on  the  south  side,  while  at  the  east  and  west  ends  a 
room  runs  from  north  to  south.  The  lintels  of  the  three 
sealed  doorways,  both  underneath  and  on  the  facings,  are 
covered  with  hieroglyphics,  as  are  also  those  of  the  doors  on 
either  side,  and  the  fact  that  none  are  found  on  the  southern 
chamber  suggests  that  the  sealing  was  for  an  important 
reason.  Returning  to  the  north  side  and  climbing  sixteen 
steps,  you  reach  the  second  platform,  on  which  stood  a  second 
house  now  merely  a  heap  of  stones.  It  was  one-roomed 
with  two  doors,  looking  north  and  south. 

As  we  came  down  the  steps  we  disturbed  a  huge  iguana, 
which  darted  up  the  face  of  the  ruin  and  ran  along  its  edge, 
stopping  motionless  at  the  corner  to  peer  over  at  us,  its  grey 
dewlapped  head  and  hideous  blinking  eyes  making  it  look 
like  some  animated  gargoyle.  Once  more  on  the  ground, 
we  turned  towards  the  eastern  annexe  of  the  nunnery,  con- 
taining five  open  and  two  closed  rooms.  Its  fagade  has 
scarcely  a  parallel  in  Central  America.  The  twining-serpent 
frieze,  the  "elephant  trunk,"  the  diamond  pattern,  and  other 
designs  common  in  Mayan  ornamentation  are  lavishly  used, 
as  can  be  seen  from  the  illustration,  while  in  a  central  arched 
niche  is  a  bust  with  a  headdress  of  feathers.  Over  the  door 
are  twenty  curious  cartouches,  five  in  a  row,  and  over  these 
are  six  ornaments  like  capital  T's  stuck  into  the  building  by 
their  stems.  As  we  approach,  two  or  three  asses,  startled 
from  their  grazing  at  the  doorways,  clatter  off  into  the  stony 
woodland.  Lizard  and  wild  ass  !  Could  better  illustration 
than  these  desolate,  gaping  palace  chambers  be  found  for 
Omar  Khayyam's  lines  : 

"They  say  the  Lion  and  the  Lizard  keep 
The  Courts  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank  deep  ; 
And  Bahram — that  great  hunter — the  wild  ass 
Stamps  o'er  his  head,  but  cannot  break  his  sleep  "  ? 


AMID    THE    PALACES    OF    THE    ITZAS         103 

We  sat  awhile  amid  the  fallen  blocks  of  masonry  in  what 
mnst  have  been  the  nunnery  courtyard,  watching  the  swallows 
as  they  flew  in  and  out  of  those  timewom  doorways.  Here 
and  there  amid  the  stunted  wiry  grass  rose  clumps  of  cactus 
and  coarse  thistle-like  plants,  while  over  all  cUmbed  a  large  blue 
convolvulus,  its  centre  striped  purple-red,  making  Nature's 
perfect  harmony  of  colouring  with  a  dainty  butter-yellow 
foxglove-shaped  flower  which  filled  the  air  with  a  subtle  musky 
perfume.  Huge  butterflies  of  orange  and  sulphur,  of  striped 
black  and  scarlet,  of  black  and  white,  flitted  among  the  blooms  ; 
while  over  us  blazed  the  sun  in  a  sea  of  blue,  the  rich  blue 
of  the  eternal  Carib  summer. 

A  few  yards  south-eastward  of  us  stood  Akad-zib,  "  House 
of  the  Mysterious  Writing,"  eighteen-roomed  and  unique  as 
being  the  only  building  in  Chichen  not  on  a  mound.  Its 
fagade — a  contrast  to  the  palace — is  severely  plain,  but  the 
building  has  importance.  In  the  room  looking  south,  over  the 
dark  hntel  of  a  doorway  leading  to  an  inner  chamber,  are  two 
rows  of  hieroglyphics, — the  best  preserved  in  Chichen, — while 
on  the  ceihng  of  this  doorway,  carved  in  rehef  and  seated 
in  front  of  what  appears  to  be  a  basin  of  incense,  is  a  figure 
in  full-feathered  dress,  a  right  angle  of  gl5T)hs  running  round 
to  its  left.  Southward  beyond  the  Akad-zib  we  could  just 
see  that  greener  patch  of  woodland  which  marks  where  lies 
the  huge  cenote  whence  the  Itzas  drew  their  water  supply. 
Approached  by  a  winding  path  which  runs  to  the  water's 
level,  the  broken  sides  of  the  chasm  admit  the  sunlight,  and 
the  blueness  of  the  water  and  the  golden  green  of  the  palm- 
leave    make  a  true  tropic  picture. 

And  so  the  reader  has  wandered  with  us  round  two  square 
miles  of  woodland,  and  glanced  at  the  wonders  of  a  city  which 
in  the  days  of  its  greatness  numbered  its  citizens  by  scores 
of  thousands ;  a  city  which  architecturally,  though  possibly 
not  culturally,  remains  the  greatest  monument  of  Central 
American  civilisation. 


CHAPTER   VII 

VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER 

THERE  are  two  kinds  of  brigands  in  Yucatan.  There 
is  the  honest  fellow  who  cuts  your  throat  without 
apology  or  waits  behind  a  tree  and  puts  a  bullet  into  your 
back  at  a  ten-yard  range  ;  and  there  is  the  oily-tongued 
"  con  permiso  "  (detestable  phrase  !  ever  on  Yucatecan  Hps) 
rascal  who,  permission  or  not,  will  see  to  it  that  your  last 
centavo  is  his,  if  he  can  manage  it.  At  Valladolid,  whither 
we  went  from  Chichen,  we  made  our  first  serious  acquaint- 
ance with  the  latter.  One  or  two  pleasant  little  episodes 
had  occurred  at  Merida,  but  they  were  only  in  the  nature  of 
dress  rehearsals. 

Valladolid — raUhead,  frontier-town — is  the  back  of  be- 
yond in  Yucatan.  To-day  it  is  the  most  important  township 
on  the  border-line  dividing  the  enslaved  Indians  from  those 
few  thousands  who  are  still  maintaining  their  independence 
against  the  criminal-recruited  forces  of  Diaz.  In  the  re- 
volt of  1847  and  in  all  the  lesser  Indian  risings  it  has  been 
the  jumping-off  ground  for  the  rebels.  It  is  a  long  dirty 
street  of  shabby  houses,  ending  in  a  weed-choked  down-on- 
its-luck  sort  of  plaza,  at  one  side  of  which  is  a  huge  gaunt 
stuccoed  church  surrounded  by  tumbling  three-foot  walls. 
The  whole  place  has  a  shamefaced,  seen-better-days  kind  of 
air  ;  and  if  it  is  indeed  true  that  it  has  claims  to  be  reckoned 
a  health  resort,  one  feels,  as  did  the  martyr  to  gout,  when 
recommended  to  a  very  dull  town  for  its  baths,  that  "  one 
prefers  the  gout." 

It  was  on  the  28th  of  May,  1543,  that  Monte  jo  founded  the 
town  on  the  sight  of  the  Indian  settlement  of  Chauac-h4.  This 
native  name  means  "  large  water,"  in  reference  to  a  great 
lagoon  of  sweet  water  on  the  northward.  It  was  the  fertility 
of  the  country  around  due  to  this  swamp  (for  it  was  nothing 
else)  which  had  attracted  the  Spaniards.     But  this  in  turn 

104 


VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER  105 

betrayed  them,  for,  ere  a  year  had  elapsed,  the  place  had  proved 
so  malarious  that  it  was  determined  to  move  the  town  to 
the  neighbouring  Indian  pueblo  of  Zaci,  There  on  the  24th  of 
March,  1544,  the  Valladolidof  to-day  was  founded,  its  plaza  being 
on  the  site  of  a  huge  Mayan  temple  built  on  a  lofty  pyramid. 
Not  a  stone  or  trace  of  the  Indian  work  now  remains,  but 
tradition  relates  that  in  the  temple  was  an  idol  of  pottery, 
regarded  as  of  great  sanctity  and  to  which  the  Indians  for 
miles  round  made  pilgrimages  for  adoration. 

There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  this  idol  was  in  the 
form  of  the  tapir,  in  Maya  called  "  tzimin."  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  queer  "  pig-deer,"  which  is  still  found  in  the 
southern  forests  of  Yucatan  and  in  Chiapas,  held  an  import- 
ant place  in  Mayan  mythology  ;  and  the  accoimt  of  this  idol 
of  pottery  at  Zaci  worshipped  as  Ah-Zakik-ual,  "  Lord  of 
the  East  Wind,"  which  is  described  as  being  shaped  like  a 
huge  vase  moulded  in  front  into  an  ugly  face,  suggests  that 
there  was  here  a  temple  dedicated  to  that  tapir  god  replicas 
of  whose  image  have  been  found  moulded  in  vase  form  in 
many  parts  of  Southern  Yucatan,  and  especially  in  Guatemala. 
The  interior  of  the  huge  vase  was  not  probably  used  for  the 
burning  of  copal,  the  figure  thus  being,  as  appears  to  have 
been  so  often  the  case,  idol  and  altar  in  one. 

We  had  left  Chichen,  as  we  had  reached  it,  in  the  dark. 
But  this  time  it  was  the  darkness  before  dawn,  and,  with  no 
moon,  the  Castillo  looked  gloomy  and  awesome  in  its  setting 
of  black  woods.  With  our  pockets  full  of  oranges  from  the 
hospitable  trees  of  the  hacienda  and  our  hearts  full  of  wonder 
at  the  ruins  amid  which  we  had  spent  so  many  interesting 
days,  we  turned  our  horses'  heads  once  more  towards  Citas, 
where  we  were  due  to  catch  another  early  train.  It  was 
perilous  work  picking  your  way  in  the  gloom  amid  the  boulders 
of  the  "  camino  real,"  as  the  Spaniards  euphemistically  call 
these  execrable  highroads.  One  wonders  what  a  sham 
"camino"  would  be  like,  if  this  is  a  "real"  one.  But  the 
Mawn  was  worth  seeing  in  those  dark  woods,  dripping  with 
the  heavy  tropical  dew. 

The  glorious  sun  came,  and  the  slate-greys  and  blacks 
turned  to  silvers  and  lustrous  greens,  and  the  dank  sodden 
boughs  changed  to  fairy  wands,  trimmed  with  diamonds 
as  the  Sim  touched  them.  And  the  sombre  sky  turned 
into  such  a  blue,  and  the  reds  and  ambers,  the  azures 
and  the  greens,  of  birds  and  butterflies  as  they  woke  foi: 


2?o6  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

another  day  were  so  wonderful,  that  one  caught  the  infection 
of  it,  the  magic  of  God's  tropic  woodland,  and  we  forgot  the 
troubles  of  boulder-strewn  roads  and  horn-pommelled  Mexican 
saddles. 

We  found  Citas  the  same  dirty  little  place  we  had  left  it 
a  week  past  and  the  people  as  stupid  as  ever.  But  after  some 
difficulties  with  our  baggage,  we  did  eventually  reach  Valladolid 
towards  midday.  To  the  Jefe  Politico  there  we  had  a  letter 
from  the  Governor  of  Yucatan,  bidding  him  treat  us  "in  a 
very  special  manner."  The  Jefe  was  a  feeble,  melancholy, 
epicene  little  man,  who  wore  spring-side  boots,  carried  a  lady's 
sUver-topped  umbrella  and  a  fan,  and  perpetually  smoked 
straw  cigarettes.  His  hair  was  dyed  and  his  manner  was 
wistfully  bored.  He  was  fetched  from  his  hammock  to 
receive  us,  and  extended  a  damp  bird-like  claw  of  a  hand. 
He  offered  us  no  hospitality  but  led  the  way  down  the  street 
to  a  filthy  shop,  in  the  rear  of  which  was  a  barn,  furnished  with 
two  hammocks  and  an  enamelled  bowl  perched  on  an  empty 
soap-box,  serving  as  dressing-table  and  washstand.  For 
food  he  directed  us  to  a  reeking  little  drinking-den.  Having 
thus  exhausted  his  energies  in  this  "  very  special  manner," 
he  retired,  promising  to  return  in  the  evening  to  assist 
us  in  the  purchase  of  stores  for  our  journey  through  the 
forest. 

There  was  very  little  to  see  in  Valladolid.  The  Spanish 
vandals  had  taken  care  of  that.  All  traces  of  the  old  Indian 
domination  had  been  effectually  wiped  out.  At  the  Jefetura, 
the  Court  House  or  Town  Hall  in  the  plaza,  signs  were  not 
lacking  of  the  troubled  state  of  the  country.  Bands  of  soldiers 
were  loitering  under  the  verandahs  cleaning  rifles  and  smoking 
cigarettes.  We  call  them  soldiers,  because  that  is  what  they 
call  themselves ;  but  they  were  certainly  the  sloppiest,  most 
ill-disciplined  body  of  men  who  ever  disgraced  that  name. 
They  were  dressed  in  loose  flying  cotton  shifts  and  cotton 
trousers,  rolled  up  to  the  knee.  Their  feet  were  sandalled, 
and  on  their  heads  were  queer  pudding-basin-shaped  straw 
hats  with  red  ribbon  lettered  in  black  5  Bat.  G.N.,  which 
means  5th  Battalion,  National  Guard.  Ever  since  the  war 
of  extermination,  some  of  the  iniquities  of  which  we  shall 
presently  relate,  was  started,  Valladolid  never  knows  quite 
where  she  is.  Raiding-parties  of  Indians  loiter  in  the  woods 
to  the  eastward,  and  make  periodic  descents  upon  outlying 
houses  and    Government    convoys.     We    attached    to    us    a 


VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER  107 

Yucatecan  lad,  sadly  enough  far  advanced  in  consumption, 
who,  unhke  his  fellow-citizens,  was  frank  and  pleasant- 
mannered  and  anxious  to  please.  With  him  as  our  guide 
we  visited  a  neighbouring  cenote,  the  water  supply  of  the 
ancient  Indian  city.  This  was  very  unlike  those  at  Chichen, 
for  it  was  not  very  deep  down  and  was  of  open  approach.  In 
a  basin  some  hundred  feet  wide  lay  the  water,  grass-green  with 
water- weed,  and  far  over  it  jutted  a  natural  roof  of  rock, 
from  which  hung  stalactites,  a  row  of  grey  stone  icicles  some 
thirty  feet  long,  hke  a  fairy  fringe  over  the  pool.  We  made  our 
way  down  the  steep  rocky  side  to  a  narrow  ledge  of  rock  which 
ran  half  way  round  the  cenote,  some  twenty  feet  above  water- 
level.  Here  there  were  caves  where  we  were  told  jaguars 
sometimes  sheltered. 

The  Jefe  Politico  was  due  to  join  us  at  eight  o'clock,  and 
on  our  return  to  the  town  we  waited  with  what  patience  we 
could  for  him.  But  he  never  appeared.  So  we  made  the 
best  of  a  bad  bargain  and  a  tour  of  the  shops,  succeeding  in 
being  swindled  over  each  item  of  our  commissariat.  On  the 
morrow,  anxious  to  be  starting,  we  walked  over  to  the  Jefetura 
to  wake  the  Mayor  up.  There  under  the  verandah  in  a  ring 
sat  the  "  rude  forefathers  "  of  this  Yucatecan  hamlet,  the 
ancient  Jefe  in  the  middle.  There  is  a  local  proverb,  "  Hay 
mucho  vago  en  Valladolid"  ("There  are  many  loiterers  in 
VaUadolid  "),  and  no  better  reahsation  of  its  truth  could  there 
have  been  than  this  band  of  venerable  officials,  drowsing  their 
morning  away.  We  were  invited  within  the  "  magic  circle," 
but  even  our  execrable  Spanish  failed  to  rouse  them.  They 
had  nothing  to  do,  so  they  sat  in  the  shade  and  did  it  ;  and 
the  street  crowd  had  nothing  to  do,  so  they  hung  on  the 
verandah  railings  and  stared  at  the  first  Englishmen  reckless 
enough  to  visit  the  City  of  Dolittles.  But  smoking  cigarettes 
and  endeavouring  to  remember  the  past  and  future  tenses 
of  irregular  Spanish  verbs  pall  as  occupations,  and,  losing  all 
patience,  we  informed  the  somnolent  Mayor  that  unless  our 
wants  in  the  matter  of  horses  and  a  servant  were  promptly 
satisfied  we  would  make  a  complaint  to  the  Governor  of  the 
State.  This  threat  galvanised  the  band  of  Vallado-httles 
into  a  frenzy  of  energy.  Soldiers  were  summoned  and  came 
forward  at  the  salute  with  fixed  bayonets.  Two  were  dis- 
patched to  get  us  hammocks  ;  a  third  went  off  to  seek  a  horse- 
dealer  ;  while  a  fourth,  actually  the  sentry  on  duty,  under 
the  directions  of  the  Jefe,  solenmly  laid  aside  his  rifle  and  set 


io8  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

to  work  to  peel  a  plate  of  oranges  which  had  been  produced 
to  assist  in  our  pacification. 

The  hammock-seeking  warriors  returned  with  a  string 
of  Indian  women,  each  nursing  "  a  special  line  "  of  hammocks. 
Of  course  prices  had  rushed  up  at  the  mere  rumour  of  us,  and 
having  been  assured  in  Merida  that  hammocks,  a  staple  pro- 
duct of  the  town,  were  cheap  in  Valladolid,  we  were  naturally 
disappointed  to  find  that  the  commonest  of  those  brought 
to  be  shown  us  were  about  three  times  their  normal  value. 
But  hammocks  we  had  to  have,  so  we  bought  a  couple  of 
strong  cloth  ones  at  an  exorbitant  price,  and  a  portion  of  the 
National  Guard  were  told  off  to  string  them. 

Then  came  the  horse-dealers  with  all  the  maimed,  the 
halt,  and  the  blind  of  equine  Valladolid.  The  prices  asked 
for  these  chargers  were  truly  tropical,  and  had  grown  to  a 
great  height.  But  no  Englishman  had  ever  visited  the  town 
before,  and  it  was  far  too  good  a  chance  to  be  lost.  We  do 
not  want  to  libel  the  somnolescent  Jefe,  but  it  was  probably 
as  much  as  his  place  was  worth  to  refuse  to  "  cock  the  blind 
'un  "  on  the  frauds  which  his  fellow-citizens  were  attempting 
to  play  on  us.  He  was  no  man  for  half-measures  in  such  a 
delicate  matter,  so  he  retired  into  the  Mayor's  Parlour  to  take 
a  nap  while  we  argued.  None  of  the  mounts  were  in  the 
first  flush  of  their  giddy  youth,  and  some  looked  Methuselahs. 
There  was  a  horse  with  a  sore  on  its  back  as  big  as  a  cheese 
plate,  which  the  owner  resolutely  declined  to  part  with  for 
less  than  a  hundred  dollars ;  while  another  steed,  badly 
spavined,  was  so  precious  to  its  lucky  proprietor  that  with 
tears  in  his  avaricious  eyes  he  assured  us  it  would  break  his 
heart  to  accept  for  this  peerless  mount  less  than  double  that 
sum.  Fortunately  we  knew  something  about  horses  and 
were  able  slowly  but  surely  to  weed  out  the  "  crocks,"  though 
the  rapacious  crowd  did  all  in  their  power  to  fool  us.  It 
ended  in  our  giving  a  hundred  dollars  too  much  for  the  three 
horses  we  selected ;  but  they  were  at  least  sound  in  "  wind 
and  limb,"  though  the  strongest,  a  stallion,  was  blind  in  the 
right  eye.  The  Mayor,  having  been  waked  up  by  a  soldier, 
then  regretfully  took  an  active  part  in  the  proceedings.  To 
prevent  horse-stealing,  the  purchase  of  a  horse  in  Yucatan 
is  attended  by  the  utmost  official  ceremony.  If  the  occasion 
had  been  an  auction  of  blood-stock  at  Tattersall's  these 
fatuous  Yucatecan  officials  could  not  have  made  more  fuss. 
Armed  with  note-books  they  waltzed  round  our  sorry  pur- 


VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER  109 

chases,  marking  down  their  pecuharities.  We  did  not  see  the 
books,  but  it  is  quite  likely  that  they  were  entered  as  having 
"  four  legs  and  a  tail."  At  any  rate  it  took  the  united  efforts 
of  the  Town  Council  to  make  out  the  ofl&cial  receipts,  which 
bore  so  many  stamps  as  must  have  crippled  the  resources  of 
the  local  G.P.O.  for  some  weeks. 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  buy  a  Yucatecan  horse,  and  it  is 
quite  another  to  load  him  with  portmanteaux  sewn  into  sacks. 
The  staUion,  which,  as  the  strongest  of  the  trio,  we  had  selected 
to  carry  the  heaviest  of  the  baggage,  had  not  "  signed  on  " 
for  any  such  nonsense  ;  and  fixing  us  with  his  one  eye,  which 
rolled  as  viciously  as  it  could  in  its  deserted  state,  he  signified 
intense  dissatisfaction  with  all  loads  and  portmanteaux  in 
particular  by  letting  out  his  heels  at  the  Mayor,  and  then 
rearing  up  and  pawing  the  air,  Pegasus-fashion,  over  a  knot 
of  sloppy  becottoned  troops  who  broke  and  ran  in  all  directions. 
He  was  really  quite  a  nice  horse.  We  afterwards  nicknamed 
him  Cyclops,  in  affectionate  allusion  to  his  ocular  defects, 
and  grew  to  be  quite  fond  of  him.  But  he  was  not  at  all  nice 
on  first  acquaintance,  and  a  crowd  of  jeering  Vallado-littles 
— far  too  scared  to  come  within  the  lash  of  his  hoofs — col- 
lected at  a  respectful  distance  to  watch  the  fun.  The  Mayor 
had  half  an  hour  before  presented  us  with  a  soldier  servant 
who  owned  the  name  Contrario,  and  rejoiced  on  all  occasions 
in  deserving  it  by  his  obstinacy.  We  had  come  into  the  country 
expecting  to  find  every  man  a  Buffalo  Bill ;  but  these  troops 
were  very  disappointing ;  they  were  so  obtrusively  foot-soldiers. 
They  evidently  agreed  with  the  Psalmist  that  "  a  horse  is 
a  vain  thing  for  safety,"  and  Contrario,  told  to  hold  Cyclops, 
absolutely  refused.  But  the  crowd  was  growing  with  our 
anger,  and  it  was  no  time  for  mutiny,  so  by  sheer  physical 
force  we  made  the  poor  shivering  wretch  carry  out  our  orders. 
Again  and  again  we  tried  to  get  the  baggage  on.  No  sooner 
did  Cyclops  feel  the  first  pressure  of  the  load,  which  we  adroitly 
brought  up  on  his  blind  side,  than  he  plunged  and  bucked 
Hke  the  veriest  broncho,  throwing  the  baggage  into,  the  dust. 
Disappointed  in  their  malicious  hope  that  we  should  have  to 
give  it  up,  one  or  two  of  the  crowd  began  to  take  a  friendly 
interest  in  our  efforts,  and  one  man,  a  big  fellow  for  a  Yucatecan 
but  obviously  as  timid  of  horses  as  our  soldier  servant,  volun- 
teered to  help.  This  time  we  got  the  twin  sacks  well  over 
the  staUion's  back  before  he  plunged,  and  a  rope,  adroitly 
thrown  round,  kept  them  in  position  till  he  quieted  down 


lio  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

and  made  up  his  mind  to  the  inevitable.  It  was  all  over 
except  the  jeering,  and,  fearful  as  we  were  of  mounting  our 
saddle  horses  and  leaving  the  recalcitrant  Cyclops  with  his 
hated  load  to  the  feeble  management  of  Contrario,  we  igno- 
miniously  led  the  horses  out  of  the  horrid  little  town  amid 
an  accompaniment  of  this  from  the  citizens.  But  it  was 
such  an  infinite  relief  to  turn  our  backs  upon  the  city  of  do- 
littles  and  brigands  that  we  could  have  calmly  borne  twice 
the  mockery  hurled  at  us  by  that  yellow-faced  shambling 
crowd. 

Our  way  lay  for  the  next  few  days  through  forty-odd 
miles  of  a  country  densely  wooded  but  traversed  by  a  fair 
road.  This  latter  had  earned  a  bad  reputation  of  late  as  being 
infested  by  bandits,  Mexican  criminals  shipped  from  Vera 
Cruz  to  serve  against  the  Indians,  who  had  deserted  and 
betaken  themselves  to  the  woods  with  their  rifles.  Only  a 
few  days  before  our  arrival  a  gang  of  them  had  murdered 
three  Indians  who  were  in  charge  of  a  drove  of  pigs.  It  had 
been  such  collar-work  inducing  the  Do-littleians  to  do  even 
the  little  they  did  that  it  was  wearing  well  on  to  four  o'clock 
before  we  found  ourselves  out  into  the  open.  Once  past  the 
outlying  huts  of  Valladolid,  the  dust  of  the  rock-strewn  road 
changed  into  a  brick-red  loam.  In  many  parts  of  Yucatan 
for  scores  of  miles  at  a  time  the  tracks  through  the  forest  are 
red  like  this,  suggestive  of  nothing  so  much  as  a  rough  cart 
road  to  an  English  brick-field.  Once  you  have  seen  one  such 
road  you  have  seen  them  all,  for  they  are  as  like  as  two  pins. 
The  dense  woods  hemmed  us  in  on  each  side,  and  the  monotony 
was  only  broken  now  and  again  by  meeting  straggling  parties 
of  Indians,  naked  but  for  breechcloth,  with  rough  plaited 
straw  hats,  their  long  guns  slung  on  their  brown  backs,  a 
linen  hunting  bag  at  their  waist,  on  their  way  to  shoot  in  the 
woods.  Throughout  Eastern  Yucatan  every  Indian  is  out 
at  dawn  and  sundown  to  pick  up  something  for  the  pot. 
Their  guns  are  for  the  most  part  antiquated  muzzle-loaders, 
single-barrelled,  sometimes  of  obviously  home  manufacture. 
They  are  poor  sportsmen  from  the  English  point  of  view, 
for  they  are  out  to  kill,  and  they  think  nothing  of  following  a 
bird  up  for  a  mile  or  two  till  they  can  shoot  it  sitting.  They 
were  a  very  different  breed  of  men  from  those  Indians  we  had 
seen  nearer  Merida,  and  some  of  them  even  looked  truculent. 
But  they  gave  us  a  very  civil  "  Buehas  tardes  !  "  ("  Good  after- 
noon !  ")  as  they  stopped  to  rest  on  their  guns  and  gaze  with 


VALLADOLID   AND    AFTER  iii 

wonder  at  such  an  unusual  spectacle  as  two  khaki-clad 
Englishmen  and  the  three  laden  horses. 

We  were  not  able  to  make  much  progress  before  the  sun 
was  near  setting,  and  we  kept  our  eyes  open  for  a  hkely  spot 
to  make  our  camp.  Shortly  before  six  we  halted  on  the 
Tizimin  side  of  the  small  Indian  village  of  Cursuc.  We  cut 
our  way  some  fifty  yards  into  the  wood  and  with  axes  made 
a  clearing  of  some  twenty  feet  square,  slinging  our  hammocks 
between  the  trees.  Tethering  the  horses  to  stout  saplings, 
we  sent  Contrario  to  the  village  for  water  ;  but  before  we  had 
got  our  saucepans  boiling,  darkness  was  on  us,  and  we  had 
to  make  the  best  of  a  meal  eaten  in  a  gloom  which  made  it 
impossible  to  tell  a  spoonful  of  black  beans  from  a  spoonful 
of  egg  till  you  tasted  them.  In  this  Cimmerian  darkness  we 
managed  to  make  the  deplorable  discovery  that  we  had  for- 
gotten to  provide  cups,  and  we  found  ourselves  in  the  ludi- 
crously Tantalus-like  position  of  having  a  saucepan,  too  hot 
to  drink  from,  of  boiling  Cadbury's  cocoa,  and  nothing  to  put 
the  precious  liquid  in.  Then  one  of  us  had  the  happy  inspiration 
of  utilising  the  saucepan  lid.  A  great  deal  of  real  fun  can 
be  got  out  of  drinking  boiling  hot  cocoa  from  a  saucepan  lid. 
It  is  so  aggravatingly  shallow,  so  infernally  hot  to  hold,  and 
so  top-heavy.  But  we  were  far  too  tired  with  the  dusty 
tramp,  after  our  long  day's  battle  with  the  detestable  inhabit- 
ants of  VaUadolid,  to  make  mountains  out  of  molehills.  If 
we  had  had  cups  we  should  have  got  through  the  precious 
draught  far  too  quickly,  we  reminded  ourselves.  Pleasure 
is  anticipation  ;  and  waiting  in  the  dark,  seated  on  a  boulder 
by  the  fire  we  had  built  in  the  red  road,  for  your  turn  at  the 
shallow  draught  was  a  real  joy.  We  got  outside  our  precious 
Cadbury,  the  black  beans,  and  the  eggs,  and  then  we  rolled 
ourselves  into  our  hammocks,  making  cocoons  of  ourselves 
in  our  Mexican  blankets,  and,  with  our  soldier  servant  stretched 
on  a  blanket  on  the  ground  between  the  two  of  us,  we  were 
soon  fast  asleep. 

Each  day  of  our  march  through  this  forest  country  was 
much  the  same  as  the  last.  We  waked  in  the  bitter  cold  of 
the  early  dawn,  huge  drops  of  dew  falling  from  the  trees  over- 
head upon  the  rubber  sheeting  which  we  had  had  the  foresight 
to  take  with  us  to  act  as  counterpane.  Each  night  we  camped 
afresh  in  the  forests,  making  a  clearing  some  Uttle  way  from 
the  road  ;  and  despite  the  alarmist  rumours  which  had  reached 
us  in  Merida  and  elsewhere  of  the  dangers  attending  such  forest 


112  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

campings,  we  had  but  one  serious  alarm.  We  had  been  asleep 
some  hours,  dead-tired  with  our  day's  march,  when  we  waked 
to  find  the  fire,  which  we  had  left  on  the  roadside  mere  embers, 
flaming  three  feet  high.  We  did  not  know  why  we  waked 
and  we  do  not  know  now,  for  there  was  no  noise  to  disturb  us, 
and  it  was  quite  an  unusual  thing  :  as  a  rule  we  slept  like 
logs.  All  we  know  is  that  we  did  wake  and  to  our  astonish- 
ment saw  the  fire,  which  we  had  carefully  stamped  out  on 
turning  in,  blazing  high.  We  were  wondering  what  this  could 
mean,  when  in  the  rear  of  us  we  heard  stealthy  footsteps, 
the  brushwood  crackling  as  if  some  two  or  three  people  were 
creeping  in  upon  us.  It  was  a  very  dark  moonless  night,  and 
altogether  the  position  was  decidedly  uncanny.  We  reached 
for  our  revolvers,  which  always  hung  by  their  belts  at  the 
hammock  head,  and  sat  up  waiting.  Whoever  it  was  had 
seen  us  move,  for  all  was  still  at  first,  and  then,  after  a  few 
minutes  of  dead  silence,  we  distinctly  heard  the  footsteps 
retreating.  Possibly,  as  our  horses  were  tethered  on  the  side 
nearest  the  road,  the  robbers  did  not  care  to  venture  in  that 
way,  but  made  up  our  fire  that  the  glare  might  guide  them  in 
a  wide  detour  through  the  wood  in  rear  of  us.  They  had  no 
doubt  hoped  to  find  us  asleep,  to  have  dashed  in  upon  us  and 
given  us  a  slash  over  the  head  with  their  long  knives,  and  then 
ransacked  our  baggage  at  their  leisure.  Finding  that  we  were 
awake,  however,  and  that  they  would  have  to  fight  for  this 
privilege,  they  decamped. 

But  brigand  alarms,  though  the  most  dignified,  were  not 
our  only  troubles  in  the  forests.  All  Yucatan,  wherever 
there  are  cattle,  is  cursed  with  an  insect  pest — a  cattle  louse 
known  as  the  garrapatas.  In  these  first  days  we  suffered 
much  from  them.  To  look  at  they  are  like  a  cross  between 
the  ordinary  bed-bug  and  a  sheep-tick,  but  they  often  have 
markings  on  their  backs  like  those  on  a  garden  spider.  They 
get  on  to  coat-sleeve  or  riding-breeches,  often  tiny  as  money- 
spiders,  in  scores  at  a  time.  They  hang  in  brown  patches 
upon  the  leaves  and  branches  of  shrubs  and  bushes,  and  if 
you  just  brush  against  these,  before  you  have  time  to  notice 
almost,  the  insects  have  climbed  all  over  you,  in  a  few  minutes 
fixing  themselves  in  the  flesh  and  digging  their  way  in  till 
nothing  but  the  rounded  tops  of  their  backs  are  visible.  Their 
bites  are  not  at  first  painful,  but  become  intensely  irritable 
after  a  day  or  two  and  cause  troublesome  swellings,  if  in  any 
great  numbers.     It  is  nothing  uncommon  to  find  fifty  or  a 


VALLADOLID    AND   AFTER  113 

hundred  of  these  tiny  plagues  on  one  after  a  day's  riding 
through  the  bush.  Cleanliness  is  no  prophylactic  against 
them.  The  only  thing  we  found  any  good  was  to  make  a 
strong  solution  of  tobacco  and  smear  this  well  over  legs, 
thighs,  and  arms  when  dressing.  This  keeps  some  of  the  less 
hardier  ones  at  bay  ;  but  the  really  big  ones  (we  found  one 
as  big  as  a  threepenny  piece  fastened  on  to  the  hinge  of  the 
lid  of  a  box-tortoise  in  the  woods  at  Chichen)  stop  at 
nothing,  and  no  pulling  will  get  them  out.  The  only  thing  to 
do  is  to  let  them  work  their  wicked  will  of  you,  when,  after  a 
day  or  two,  they  fill  up  with  blood  and  turn  a  deep  purple 
colour  like  a  black  Hamburg  grape.  In  this  aldermanic  con- 
dition of  repletion  they  are  very  easily  detached,  .  .  .  and 
alas  !   squashed. 

The  Yucatecans  are  a  cleanly  people  and  bathe  a  great 
deal,  the  poor  as  well  as  rich  ;  but  nothing  astonished  Con- 
trario  more  than  our  rubber  bath.  This,  which  we  had  bought 
in  London,  folded  into  so  small  a  space  that  it  was  a  treat  to 
watch  his  face  when  we  first  imfolded  it  and  he  saw  an  ad- 
mirable bath  four  feet  in  diameter,  spread  out  as  if  by  a  con- 
juring trick.  If  we  stopped  early  enough  and  the  sun  was 
still  up,  we  would  send  him  down  to  the  nearest  well  and  have 
a  glorious  time  splashing  about  and  sponging  cool  streams 
of  water  over  ourselves,  while  gorgeous  butterflies  of  blue, 
scarlet,  and  amber  fluttered  round  us  in  the  thicket,  and  green 
parakeets  and  the  bushy-tailed  grey  squirrels  perched  on  the 
trees  to  watch  us.  Though  probably  as  immoral  as  any  race 
in  the  world,  the  Yucatecans  are  singularly  modest,  and, 
though  he  saw  us  minus  everything  but  a  smile  revelling  in 
the  cool  limestone  water  and  he  would  sit  mournfully  by 
trying  to  pick  the  garrapatas  out  of  his  legs  and  thighs, 
nothing  would  induce  him  to  take  advantage  of  our  rubber 
bath,  presumably  because  he  feared  we  might  look  while  he 
was  in  the  "  altogether." 

The  villages  we  passed  were  monotonously  aUke :  squares 
of  palm-leaf-thatched  huts  round  a  plot  of  wiry  grass  centred 
by  the  village  well  with  gibbet-hke  uprights  and  crosspiece 
of  wood  over  which  hung  the  bucket.  At  all  hours  of  the  day 
there  clustered  here  knots  of  Indian  women  and  girls,  the 
cantor  OS  (earthenware  water- jars)  balanced  on  their  left  hips 
as  they  pattered  to  and  fro  to  their  whitewashed  huts  with 
the  precious  hquid.  We  generally  called  our  midday  halt 
between  these  settlements,  as  we  found  that  our  arrival  was 

8 


114  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

hailed  with  the  same  popular  excitement  as  that  which  wel- 
comes a  circus  in  an  English  village  ;  and  it  is  a  trifle  dis- 
concerting, even  if  your  menu  is  not  very  varied,  to  eat  one's 
lunch  in  the  centre  of  a  serried  circle  of  bright-eyed  children 
and  women,  and  grinning,  wondering  men.  But  the  fourth 
day  at  the  little  village  of  Pokboc  we  were  so  much  tempted 
by  the  wonderful  shade  of  a  large  ceibo-tree  which  stood  by 
the  huge  ruined  church,  inside  the  gaunt  staring  walls  of  which 
a  whitewashed  Indian  hut  now  did  duty  for  such  infrequent 
services  as  were  held,  that  we  broke  our  rule.  Though  we 
were  now  deep  in  Yucatan's  cool  season,  the  heat  had  been 
blistering  all  the  morning,  and,  steering  as  we  had  been  due 
north  on  a  fairly  straight  road,  the  sun  on  our  backs  had 
made  us  feel  quite  sick.  Thus  the  deep  shade  offered  by  the 
giant  tree,  the  leafiest  of  all  trees  found  in  the  country,  was 
an  irresistible  temptation.  The  horses,  too,  had  suffered,  and 
stood  as  meek  as  lambs  to  be  unsaddled.  But  before  we  had 
got  far  in  our  preparations  for  a  meal  half  the  village  was 
round  us,  to  make  way  in  a  second  for  two  men,  one  about 
sixty,  with  a  long  tufted  beard  of  grey,  growing  from  the 
extreme  hmit  of  his  chin,  the  other  some  twenty  years  younger. 
They  cordially  introduced  themselves  as  the  village  Jefe  and 
his  son  ;  the  latter  insisting  upon  calling  himself  "  el  secre- 
tario."  They  kept  the  store  and  public-house  of  the  village, 
and,  in  the  absence  of  customers,  had  filled  up  their  time  by 
serving  themselves  so  liberally  that  they  were  quite  merry. 
They  insisted  that  we  should  come  to  their  shop  and  take 
some  of  their  "  agua  ardiente  "  (fire-water  :  and  it  lives  up 
to  its  name  too) ;  but  we  explained  that  we  were  teetotalers. 
At  this  moment  there  came  racing  across  the  plaza  a 
perfectly  lovely  little  laddie,  bare-legged  and  bare-headed, 
with  the  scantiest  of  cotton  vests  and  black-cotton  knicker- 
bockers on.  El  Secretario  introduced  the  little  fellow  as  his 
son,  "  Cipriano,  su  servidor  "  ("  Cipriano,  at  your  service  "),  and 
told  us  he  was  ten.  We  had  a  bottle  of  acid  drops  with  us, 
and  diving  in  our  saddle-bags  we  in  a  moment  won  Cipriano's 
heart  and  cemented  our  budding  friendship  with  the  family 
by  filling  his  pretty  little  hand  full  of  the  sweets.  By  this 
time  a  baby  sister  had  arrived,  and  we  found  it  impossible 
longer  to  resist  the  pressing  hospitalities  of  the  Jefe.  We 
were  anxious,  too,  to  taste  the  national  drink,  which  has  the 
ahas  of  "  anise  "  and  is  made  from  crushed  sugar-cane  and 
aniseed.     So  we  temporarily  threw  our  teetotal  principles  to 


VALLADOLID    AND    AFTER  115 

the  four  winds  (or  at  least  to  where  those  most  desirable 
elements  successfully  hid  themselves,  for  there  was  not  a 
breath  of  air)  and  walked  over  to  the  store.  Once  there, 
large  glasses  of  the  clear  white  liquid  were  poured  out,  and 
our  hosts,  enchanted  at  the  excuse  for  more  tippling,  began 
drinking  our  healths  in  such  lavish  style  as  was  ominous  of 
the  great  difficulty  we  should  have  in  getting  away  from  their 
bibulous  friendliness  without  the  risk  of  a  quarrel.  We  had 
just  sipped  at  our  glasses,  which  was  all  we  ever  intended 
to  do,  when  fortune  came  to  our  aid.  Looking  across  the 
plaza,  we  saw  a  stray  village  horse  biting  oiu:  stallion's  neck. 
With  a  hurried  word  of  excuse,  we  rushed  out  of  the  shop, 
our  hosts  shouting  to  us  to  return  after  we  had  righted  things. 
But  we  never  did  ;  and  the  somnolent  effects  of  the  last 
"  bumpers  "  of  anise  they  had  drunk  were  so  complete  that 
we  were  left  to  eat  our  lunch  in  peace.  By  the  time  we  had 
finished  it  was  the  siesta  hour  and  the  village  had  crept  into 
its  hammocks.  As  we  rode  past  the  store,  we  caught  a  glimpse 
of  our  friend  the  Jefe  stretched  fuU  length,  fast  asleep,  on  his 
own  counter. 

From  Pokboc  it  was  some  three  leagues  (all  distances  in 
Yucatan  are  measured  by  the  league,  which  is  not  the  well- 
conducted  league  of  Europe,  but,  like  the  French  verbs, 
irregular  to  the  verge  of  impropriety)  to  Calotmul  on  a  road 
which  seemed  redder  and  hotter  than  ever.  Calotmul  is  a 
town  nm  to  seed,  a  ruinous  unwieldy  place  with  a  plaza  of 
mangy  grass  as  big  as  Trafalgar  Square,  a  long  stuccoed, 
arcaded  building  in  one  comer  of  which  served  as  the  Jefetura 
where  loitered  some  of  Contrario's  brothers-in-arms.  Big  as 
these  decayed  Spanish-Indian  villages  are,  there  is  never  any 
attempt  at  an  inn,  the  very  rare  travellers  by  the  roads  being 
local  Yucatecans  who  are  sure  of  having  one  or  more  kinsmen 
in  each  village.  So  knowing  no  one  and  having  been  sated 
with  Yucatecan  interiors  at  vile  Valladolid,  we  pushed  on 
through  the  town,  preferring  the  freedom  of  our  woodland  hotel. 
Our  obstinacy  much  alarmed  Contrario.  He  knew  that  Tizimin, 
the  town  to  which  we  were  steering  and  which  was  to  serve 
as  the  base  for  serious  exploration,  was  fourteen  miles  further 
on,  and  he  thought  we  intended  to  try  and  reach  it  that  night. 
But  he  became  easier  in  his  mind  when  we  unhooked  from 
the  saddle  our  tripod  boiler,  which  had  throughout  the  journey 
served  as  a  pail  for  fetching  drinking-water,  and  sent  him  back 
to  the  well.     By  the  time  he  had  overtaken  us  we  had  selected 


Ii6  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

a  camping-ground  about  half  a  mile  from  the  village,  the 
horses  were  feeding  quietly  by  the  roadside,  the  baggage  had 
been  carried  into  the  woods  and  our  hammocks  slung. 

We  always  made  a  practice  of  one  of  us  seeing  the  horses 
properly  watered,  while  the  other  stayed  in  camp.  As  soon 
as  Contrario  rejoined  us  it  was  time  for  "  watering  order  "  ; 
and  one  of  us  started  out  on  Cyclops,  while  Contrario  led  the 
other  horses,  tied  together.  We  had  given  him  the  kettle 
and  one  of  the  water-bottles  to  carry.  The  well  was  reached 
safely,  the  horses  watered,  and  some  corn  bought  at  the  local 
store  ;  but  on  return  to  camp  Contrario  was  only  carrying 
the  kettle.  He  had  already  annoyed  us  by  the  slow  pace  at 
which  he  had  kept  the  horses  going  and  by  loitering  to  talk 
with  some  of  the  National  Guard.  We  were  tired  and  not 
in  the  best  of  tempers,  and  somewhat  testily  demanded  to  know 
where  the  water-bottle  was.  He  gabbled  away  in  Spanish 
some  sentences  we  did  not  understand,  but  did  not  attempt 
to  produce  it.  We  thought  he  had  left  it  at  the  well  and  tried 
to  say  so,  ordering  him  to  return  for  it.  He  entirely  mis- 
understood, and  believed  we  were  accusing  him  of  stealing 
it.  The  fellow  was  a  fool  but  he  was  genuinely  honest,  and 
the  most  we  were  accusing  him  of  was  carelessness.  But  he 
would  not  be  pacified,  and  wringing  his  hands  and  in  a  snivel- 
ling whine  repeating  again  and  again  "  Yo  soy  no  robo  /"  {"  I  am 
no  robber  !  "),  he  gathered  up  his  traps,  and,  regardless  of  pay, 
was  about  to  leave  when  suddenly  by  the  firelight  one  of  us 
detected  the  water-bottle,  lying  hidden  in  the  shadow  of  a 
boulder  where  he  had  set  it  down  and  forgotten  it  before  going 
down  to  the  well.  We  were  really  sorry  to  have  hurt  his 
feehngs,  and  he  saw  it,  and  with  almost  childish  pleasure 
accepted  our  apologies.  It  was  like  a  thunderstorm,  it  cleared 
the  air  ;  and  as,  after  our  frugal  meal  of  black  beans,  boiled 
eggs,  tortiUas,  and  Cadbury's  cocoa,  we  sat  round  the  fire 
smoking,  we  became  quite  "  chummy  "  with  the  soldier-lad, 
who,  delighted  at  the  rehabihtation  of  his  character,  talked 
nineteen  to  the  dozen  till  hammock-time,  when  we  cemented 
our  new-found  friendship  by  giving  him  one  of  our  blankets 
to  aid  his  own  flimsy  Mexican  wrap  in  keeping  him  warm 
during  the  cold  night. 

The  next  day,  in  sunlight  which  was  positively  grilling, 
we  completed  our  journey  to  Tizimin.  It  was  siesta  time 
when  we  rode  into  the  plaza  under  the  shadow  of  the  gaunt 
walls  of  the  hideous  ruined  monastery.     The  town  was  quiet, 


VALLADOLID    AND   AFTER  117 

almost  like  a  city  of  the  dead.  The  shops  were  closed ;  and  at 
the  long  grated  window-spaces  sunblinds  were  drawn.  The 
grass  had  invaded  the  streets  ;  the  whole  place  looked  like 
a  Rip  Van  Winkle  city  which  had  got  badly  "  left  "  in  the  race 
of  civic  life.  Stretched  in  the  thick  dust  a  mangy  dog  or  two 
lay  panting  ;  here  and  there  under  the  shadow  of  a  wall  dozed 
an  Indian,  crouched  on  his  haunches.  We  rode  up  to  the 
Jefetura,  and  there  from  a  yawning  soldier  we  learnt  that 
the  Jefe  was  taking  his  morning  tub,  so  we  had  some  minutes 
to  wait  before  we  could  expect  an  official  welcome.  Mean- 
while we  had  time  to  glance  round  us.  The  plaza  was  of 
much  the  same  size  as  ValladoUd.  In  front  of  the  Palacio 
Mimicipal,  where  the  becottoned  National  Guard  were  drowsing 
in  the  verandah-shade,  was  an  avenue  of  orange  trees  loaded 
with  fruit.  On  the  other  side  of  the  square  stood  another  of 
those  huge  stuccoed  churches  we  had  become  so  accustomed 
to  seeing.  The  seventeenth-century  Spaniards  in  Yucatan 
certainly  had  no  taste  in  building.  Nothing  could  be  more  dis- 
tressing than  these  great  piles  of  stucco,  fiat-faced  as  any 
Hottentot.  Their  bigot  builders  certainly  preferred  quantity 
to  quality.  Even  when  new,  these  ecclesiastical  eyesores  must 
have  always  been  such.  But  now,  .  .  .  with  plaster  peeling 
off,  with  tufts  of  rank  weeds  growing  from  gaps  in  the  walls, 
surroimded  by  a  courtyard  half  cobble,  half  leprous  grass, 
the  enclosing  waUs  tumbUng  in  ruin,  the  church  gate  sagging 
on  its  broken  rusty  hinges  or  perchance  replaced  by  a  hurdle, 
they  admirably  t5q)ify  the  bedraggled  down-at-heel  cere- 
monial which  masquerades  throughout  Yucatan  as  rehgion. 

By  this  time  our  arrival  had  attracted  representatives 
of  the  Tiziminians  in  the  shape  of  three  of  the  fattest  boys 
we  had  ever  seen  outside  a  show.  They  were  pretty  fellows, 
too,  about  thirteen  years  old  ;  but  they  would  have  been  a 
good  deal  prettier  if  they  had  possessed  less  adipose  tissue. 
Their  tight  hoUand  knickers  seemed  on  the  point  of  giving 
up  the  task  of  enclosing  the  luxuriant  opulence  of  what  one 
might  politely  call  their  southern  fagades  ;  while  their  bare 
brown  legs  were  so  ludicrously  plump  and  rounded  that  they 
looked  as  if  they  had  been  blown  up  with  a  bicycle  pump. 
The  boys  gazed  at  us  and  we  gazed  at  the  boys  ;  it  was  hard 
to  say  which  of  the  two  sets  of  gazers  was  most  astonished. 
But  by  this  time  a  shuffling  among  the  troops  heralded  the 
approach  of  the  Jefe,  coming  Uke  a  giant  refreshed  from  his 
bath.     He  was  a  great  contrast  to  the  epicene  bird-like  creature 


ri8  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

who  had  lorded  it  over  the  civic  fortunes  of  Valladolid.  A 
grand  old  man  of  good  height,  swarthy  skinned,  with  a  snow- 
white  full  patriarchal  beard  reaching  nearly  to  his  waist, 
he  greeted  us  with  true  Spanish  courtesy,  with  a  hospitable 
wave  of  his  hand  inviting  us  within  the  cool  stone  room, 
where  above  the  row  of  rocking-chairs  hung  a  life-sized 
coloured  print  of  the  great  Diaz.  It  was  a  most  humiliating 
moment.  Dusty,  dirty,  sweaty,  covered  with  garrapatas, 
with  many  days'  growth  of  beard,  we  were  grieved  indeed 
that  this  should  be  the  snowy-haired  Don's  first  sight  of  Eng- 
land. We  indicated  as  best  we  could  that  this  was  not  the 
normal  condition  of  Englishmen,  and  that  we  should  be  more 
than  grateful  if  he  would  allow  us  to  wash  first  and  talk  after- 
wards. But  he  insisted  upon  hearing  our  plans,  and  when  we 
told  him  of  our  intention  of  going  through  the  country  to  the 
eastward  his  face  bore  a  look  of  alarm.  He  declared  the 
country  "  muy  peligroso  "  (very  dangerous)  ;  that  the  Indians 
were  hostile  to  the  whites  ;  that  even  for  the  contents  of  a 
water-bottle  travellers  were  killed,  as  in  fact  had  actually 
happened  to  two  Yucatecans  but  a  few  weeks  before.  We 
were  too  much  in  need  of  a  wash  to  be  much  depressed  by  his 
pessimism,  and  were  glad  when  he  made  a  move  to  find  us 
lodgings.  These  we  found  without  much  difficulty,  a  young 
Yucatecan  being  fetched  and  offering  us  a  house  for  four 
dollars  the  week.  It  was  only  a  few  yards  away,  nothing 
really  but  two  or  three  lofty  whitewashed  barns  en  suite, 
stone-floored,  the  walls  decorated  with  hammock-pegs.  But 
the  great  advantage  was  that  it  possessed  a  small  paddock, 
rankly  overgrown  with  shrubs  and  grass,  which  would  serve 
as  an  excellent  corral  for  our  horses.  A  well  too,  there 
was,  and  before  the  genial  Jefe  had  bade  us  "  Adiosf"  we 
had  our  rubber  bath  out  and  were  preparing  for  a  glorious 
wash. 

We  were  now  in  what  is  known  as  the  Kantunil  district, 
and  in  touch  with  the  north-eastern  branch  of  the  inde- 
pendent Mayans.  For  Tizimin  is  the  last  outpost  of  Yucatecan 
authority.  Even  the  Indians  living  within  the  town  are  a 
very  different  breed  from  the  haciendado-ridden  ones  of  the 
Yucatan  which  lay  behind  us.  And  this  is  perhaps  the  best 
place  to  give  some  idea  of  the  physical  appearance  of  the 
Mayan  Indians  generally.  The  whole  race  throughout  the 
Peninsula  is  still  singularly  homogeneous,  though  it  is  in 
the  Kantunil  and  eastern  coast  district,  where  crossings  with 


VALLADOLID    AND   AFTER  119 

the  whites  or  even  inter-tribally  are  unknown,  that  the  purest 
types  are  found. 

The  Mayan  is  stoutly  built  and  muscular,  but  seldom 
tall.  His  colour  is  a  rich  dark  reddish  brown — a  beautiful 
tint  remarkably  distinct  from  that  of  the  American  Indian 
race  in  general.  His  hair  is  invariably  raven  black,  lank 
and  coarse.  His  eyes  are  black  or  black-brown,  usually  small 
and  somewhat  cunning-looking  ;  straight  set  as  a  rule,  but 
occasionally  with  a  suspicion  of  obliquity.  The  nose  is  well 
formed,  straight  or  slightly  aquiline,  and  at  times  somewhat 
Semitically  heavy  at  the  tip  ;  but  scarcely  ever  pyramidal  in 
the  pure  Mayans.  The  noses  of  the  women  one  would  almost 
declare  their  best  feature.  The  hair  of  the  women,  worn 
gathered  in  a  knot  at  the  back  of  the  head,  is  often  luxuriantly 
long  ;  but  men  are  fairly  closely  cropped.  Of  baldness  we 
never  saw  a  trace,  though  grey  Indians  of  both  sexes  are 
fairly  common.  Both  sexes  have  a  Mongolian  lack  of  body 
hair;  legs,  arms  and  chests  being  rarely  hirsute.  The  teeth 
are  always  good,  and  add  to  the  charm  of  the  sweet  smile 
which  at  the  least  provocation  comes  to  rob  the  faces  of  both 
sexes  of  the  rather  sullen  expression  characteristic  of  them. 
Many  of  the  children  are  extraordinarily  pretty,  and  young 
girls  of  twelve  (at  which  age  they  usually  marry)  are  often 
fascinating  pictures  of  youthful  bloom,  quite  statuesque  in 
their  grace,  their  exquisitely  develoi>ed  figures  showing  through 
the  clinging  folds  of  their  one  chemise-Uke  linen  garment. 

Mayan  women  age  rapidly ;  but  between  puberty  (about 
ten)  and  their  twenty-fifth  year  they  are  remarkable  for 
matronly  health  and  strength  and  their  graceful  carriage. 
They  incUne  to  flesh,  and  before  forty  are  often  unwieldy  to  a 
degree  which  is  reaUy  ludicrous  ;  such  "  too,  too  solid  flesh  " 
scarcely  harmonising  with  the  severely  scanty  lines  of  the 
huipil.  This — the  univeral  dress  of  all  Indian  women  through- 
out Yucatan — is  really  nothing  but  a  sheet,  folded  double 
and  sewn  down  the  sides  and  a  half-moon  cut  out  of  the  middle 
of  the  fold.  Through  this  the  head  goes,  and  round  this 
yoke  runs  back  and  front  a  flowered  border,  stamped  coloured 
cotton  among  the  poorer,  elaborately  hand-embroidered 
among  the  richer,  women.  The  hem  of  the  garment,  which 
reaches  rather  more  than  half-way  down  the  calf,  is  also 
often  ornamented  with  embroidery.  This  shift  or  chemise — for 
it  is  Uttle  else — is  sleeveless ;  and  the  only  attempt  at  under- 
clothes is  a  plain  cotton  petticoat ;  but  many  women  and  most 


120  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

young  girls  do  not  wear  this.  In  some  of  the  wilder  districts 
we  visited  the  girls  are  stark  naked  till  puberty,  while  the  old 
women  and  many  of  the  young  matrons  wear  nothing  but  a 
short  cotton  kilt  from  waist  to  knee.  Round  her  neck  the 
Indian  woman  wears  a  chain  (though  this  habit  is  less  common 
among  the  independent  Mayans  than  among  the  Indians  of 
Merida  and  the  north-west  district),  oftenest  of  gilt  or  glass 
beads,  with  some  smaU  gold  coin,  gewgaw,  charm  or  crucifix 
attached.  Large  gold  earrings,  too,  are  much  worn.  Round 
her  shoulders  she  throws,  when  out  of  doors,  a  wrap  of  cotton 
or  silk,  brought  up  over  the  head  and  then  allowed  to  hang 
down  over  the  other  shoulder.  These  wraps,  which  serve 
a  practical  purpose  in  protecting  from  the  sun,  are  most 
picturesque.  In  Merida,  as  we  have  said,  you  see  all  colours  ; 
but  a  dark  indigo  or  rich  copper  brown  are  the  most  common 
in  the  country  districts.  Almost  without  exception  the 
women  go  barefoot,  and  their  feet,  though  small,  have  from 
long  shoelessness  become  broad. 

The  Mayan  man  dresses  in  loose  white-cotton  trousers, 
which  he  usually  wears  turned  up  to  the  knees,  and  a  loose- 
fitting  shirt  of  white  cotton  tucked  in  at  the  belt.  As  often 
as  not  the  shirt  is  discarded  while  at  work  or  in  the  bush, 
and  the  trousers  give  place  to  the  maxtli,  a  broad  loin-cloth. 
A  pudding-basin-shaped  straw  hat,  home-plaited,  and  sandals 
made  of  a  single  thickness  of  tanned  hide  cut  to  the  shape 
of  the  foot,  with  a  piece  of  cord  coming  up  between  the  first 
and  second  toe,  passing  over  the  instep  and  through  a  string 
loop  on  either  side  of  the  heel  and  then  twisted  round  the 
ankle,  complete  his  outfit.  Every  Indian  wears  belted  round 
him  in  a  leather  sheath  the  machete,  the  native  weapon  uni- 
versal throughout  Central  America.  It  is  a  sword-like  knife, 
the  blade  about  thirty  inches  long  and  two  broad,  with  a 
plain  hand-grip  of  bone  or  wood  about  four  inches  long.  These 
are  fearsome-looking  weapons  even  when,  as  is  usually  the 
case,  the  blade  is  straight ;  but  they  are  positively  blood- 
curdling when  they  are,  as  one  sees  them  sometimes,  scimitar- 
shaped  or  ending  with  an  ugly  hook,  like  the  finish  of  an 
English  biUhook. 

The  Mayans  are  a  singularly  healthy  people,  and  free  of 
skin  complaints  and  those  other  blood  diseases  which  so  often 
affect  native  races  in  a  low  state  of  civilisation.  But  they 
are  not  constitutionally  strong,  and  die  off  like  flies  when 
exposed  to  an  epidemic.     Though  so  thoroughly  a  tropical 


VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER  lai 

people,  they  are  cold-blooded  with  sluggish  circulations,  if 
one  is  to  judge  by  the  coldness  of  their  hands,  which,  even  in 
the  children,  are  froggy  in  their  chilliness.  They  are  a  clean 
race,  and  the  Mayan  labourer  on  coming  in  from  his  work 
would  not  dream  of  squatting  before  his  frugal  evening  meal 
of  tortillas  and  beans  till  he  has  had  a  hot  bath.  This  he  takes 
in  a  large  shallow  wooden  trough,  exactly  like  a  butcher's 
tray  magnified  four  times.  In  this,  one  end  resting  on  the 
ground,  the  other  raised  on  a  low  log  of  wood,  the  Mayan 
squats  and  sponges  the  water  over  himself  with  a  bunch  of 
henequen  or  other  fibre.  In  this  tray,  too,  the  babies  are 
bathed  and  the  family  washing  is  done.  It  is  always  washing- 
day  with  the  Mayan  women,  and  the  hut  gardens  are  always 
a-flutter  with  billowy  white  huipils.  The  Mayans  are  a 
singularly  modest  people,  and,  sharing  their  huts,  we  were 
again  and  again  astonished  at  the  decency  which  triumphed 
over  the  fact  that  a  large  family  of  all  ages  shared  the  same 
sleeping-room  and  slung  their  hammocks  from  the  same  beams. 
With  Tizimin  as  our  base  we  explored  the  Kantunil  dis- 
trict. The  roads  marked  even  on  the  official  maps  in  Mexico 
City  no  longer  exist,  probably  never  existed.  Overgrown  and 
rendered  impassable  by  luxuriant  vegetation,  such  as  there 
are  have  become  mere  trails  which  even  the  Indians  can  only 
use  in  single  file.  Thirty  miles  to  the  eastward  of  Tizimin 
begins  the  region  of  unbroken  primeval  forest.  The  road, 
which  starts  a  good  width,  dwindles  down  into  a  mere  path 
by  which  the  Indians  from  Chansenote  and  Kantunil  come 
into  Tizimin  to  buy  powder  or  shot  or  a  new  gun.  Growing 
their  own  maize,  raising  cattle,  pigs  and  poultry,  spinning  and 
weaving  their  clothing,  braiding  their  hats  and  netting  their 
hammocks,  arms,  salt,  and  luxuries  such  as  women's  finery  or 
spirits  are  all  they  need  to  buy.  They  come  into  Tizimin 
not  in  crowds  but  one  or  two  at  a  time,  so  as  not  to  create 
suspicion,  and  meet  their  friends  outside  with  their  purchases. 
Of  these  Indians  some  five  thousand  are  said  to  still  exist  in 
this  north-eastern  corner  of  the  Peninsula  ;  but  the  Mexican 
authorities,  after  butchery  as  ruthless  as  it  has  been  fruitless, 
have  been  forced  to  retreat,  and  there  is  thus  no  way  of 
obtaining  accurate  statistics.  The  Jefe  PoUtico  of  Merida 
himself  told  us  (we  quote  it  as  a  proof  that  the  Indians  have 
triumphed  thereabouts)  that  his  family  property  near  Kantunil 
had  not  been  of  any  profit  for  years  and  was  never  Ukely  to 
be  again,  as  the  Mayans  denied  his  agents  access  to  it. 


122  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

It  was  at  Tizimin  that  we  first  realised  the  positively 
amazing  ignorance  of  the  Yucatecan  as  to  his  own  country 
or  even  his  own  district.  No  definite  information  as  to  the 
road  we  should  take,  or  whether  indeed  we  could  reach  the 
coast  at  all,  was  available.  As  it  proved,  this  was  impossible. 
Between  Kantunil  and  the  sea  stretch  miles  of  uninhabitable 
swamp  which  is  impassable  for  horse,  mule  or  man  except 
possibly  in  places  at  the  end  of  the  driest  of  dry  seasons. 
When  we  were  there  an  average  of  three  feet  of  water  covered 
the  coast  lands.  A  change  of  plan  was  thus  essential,  and 
we  had  to  go  first  more  directly  north  and  then  take  an  east- 
ward course.  Meanwhile  we  employed  some  days  in  exploring 
the  north-easterly  district.  The  road  to  Chansenote  shows 
signs  of  the  struggle  which  has  ended,  at  any  rate  for  the 
present,  in  the  triumph  of  the  Indians,  Here  and  there  the 
gaunt  waUs  of  ruined  haciendas,  half  hidden  by  luxuriant 
tropic  weed,  stand  as  silent  witnesses  to  the  cowardly  retreat 
of  the  Yucatecan  landlords.  A  cruel  war  of  extermination 
has  laid  its  desolating  hand  on  all  around,  and  the  hungry 
forest  has  swallowed  up  again  milpas  (cornfields)  and  fruit 
gardens. 

The  Indians  themselves  we  found  friendly  enough  if 
treated  fairly  and  kindly.  The  children  would  watch  us 
solemnly  from  the  hut-doors,  and  the  boys  and  men  followed 
us  at  a  respectful  distance  in  our  wanderings  through  the 
woodlands  in  search  of  buried  cities.  We  found  little  save 
littered  stones,  but  our  excursions  satisfied  us  that  no  Chichens 
exist  in  this  part  of  Yucatan.  Chansenote  itself,  once  a 
flourishing  Indian  town,  is  now  a  group  of  mud-plastered  huts 
with  possibly  three  dozen  inhabitants.  Kantunil  is  a  larger 
settlement,  strictly  Indian  now  as  it  always  has  been  ;  the 
government  vested  in  an  Indian  chief.  Here  the  Mayans 
live  pretty  much  as  did  their  ancestors  four  centuries  back, 
cultivating  their  milpas,  rearing  their  farm  stock,  nominally 
Catholics  but  really  without  religion,  save  a  jumbled  mass  of 
superstition  in  which  Christian  Saints  and  pagan  gods  are, 
after  the  long  lapse  of  years,  inextricably  mixed. 

Due  north  of  Tizimin  the  country  is  still  for  the  most 
part  in  the  hands  of  the  Yucatecans  ;  but  the  cultivation  of 
it  is  handicapped  by  a  dearth  of  labour,  for  here  the  Indians 
do  not  submit  to  the  conditions  of  serfdom  existing  in  so- 
called  civilised  Yucatan,  but  wiU  only  work  for  fair  wage,  and 
often  not  long  for  that.     Kikil,  some  miles  from  Tizimin  on 


VALLADOLID    AND   AFTER  123 

the  north,  is  a  straggling  settlement  of  such  working  Indians, 
once  the  site  of  a  large  Indian  town  before  the  Spaniards  built 
Tizimin.  Here  there  were  said  to  be  extensive  ruins,  but  we 
were  disappointed  as  usual.  Nothing  is  more  disheartening 
than  the  glib  way  the  idiotic  Yucatecans  send  one  on  wild- 
goose  chases  after  ruins  which  prove  to  be  hideous  CathoUc 
churches  of  the  late  seventeenth  or  early  eighteenth  centuries. 
The  Indians,  too,  are  untrustworthy  guides  in  such  matters,  for 
they  have  a  perfect  indifference  to  the  architectural  skill  of 
their  ancestors,  and  speak  of  their  productions  as  "  xlap-pak  " 
(old  walls). 

ChristmcLS  week  is  a  grand  time  for  Tizimin,  for  it  heralds 
in  the  great  local  fiesta  of  the  year,  a  feast  which  lasts  from 
Christmas  day  till  the  New  Year.  Though  synchronous  with 
our  Yuletide,  it  is  not  in  celebration  of  that,  but  in  honour 
of  the  local  patron  saint.  The  great  feature  of  this  gala  are 
the  bullfights.  It  is  really  doing  them  too  much  honour, 
though,  to  give  them  this  dignified  name  ;  for  they  are  really 
nothing  less  than  a  series  of  cowardly  baitings  of  young 
bullocks.  Ichabod  !  Ichabod  !  The  glory  of  the  bullring 
hath  departed  from  Yucatan.  We  shall  have  more  to  say 
of  this  decadent  torturing  of  domesticated  animals  in  a  later 
chapter.  But  the  people  "see  blood,"  and  in  this  respect 
the  Indians  are  as  bad  as  the  mongrel  usurpers  of  their 
country,  and  crowds  flock  in  from  the  settlements  for  miles 
round.  They  bring  with  them  their  wives,  their  children, 
and  packs  of  dogs  ;  the  babies  astride  their  mother's  hips, 
the  bigger  children  clinging  to  her  huipil ;  while  the  men  bend 
under  huge  loads  of  basket-baggage  slung  on  their  backs,  but 
the  whole  dead  weight  of  which  is  on  the  man's  forehead,  the 
broad  plaited  string  of  the  basket  passing  just  above  his  eyes. 
This  is  the  queer  way  that  all  the  Mayan  Indians  carry  loads ; 
and  as  you  pass  them  they  look  up  at  you  from  under  the 
strings,  their  uneasy  attitude  giving  their  eyes  a  quite  unfair 
appearance  of  sneaky  shiftiness. 

This  fiesta  week,  then,  we  had  the  local  life  of  Tizimin  at 
its  brightest.  The  plaza  turns  itself  into  a  fair,  with  rows  of 
tiny  wooden  booths  whereat  cheap  gewgaws  and  tasteless 
finery  in  cottons  and  tinsels,  necklaces  of  beads  and  the  in- 
evitable rosaries  hung  with  cheap  gilt  crosses,  bankrupt  the 
Indian  wife  ;  while  her  lord  fuddles  himself  with  hquid  poisons 
at  the  drinking-shops.  Foodstuffs  leap  up  to  famine  prices. 
The  skinny  fowl  which  would  have  cost  you  a  dollar  (two 


124  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

shillings)  "  booms "  to  three ;  eager  crowds  surround  the 
butchers'  stalls  where  from  dawn  are  trays,  none  too  clean, 
piled  up  with  blood-boltered  lumps  of  meat  (they  never  cut 
their  beef  in  joints  in  Yucatan)  calculated  to  rob  an  average 
tom-cat  of  his  appetite.  Trays  of  unspeakably  sticky  sweets 
reek  in  the  sun,  surrounded  by  eager-faced  children.  Strung 
like  onions,  hundreds  of  tortillas  hang  festooned  on  strings 
round  the  shops,  as  if  some  huge  type  of  yellow  mushroom 
had  been  utilised  for  decoration.  Hour  after  hour  gallop  into 
the  dusty  plaza  caballeros  from  the  local  plantations — fine 
young  dandies  these  !  who  fancy  themselves,  intent  on 
conquests  among  some  of  those  black-eyed  girls  who  stare 
from  the  shaded  doorways  as  they  clatter  past.  The  three- 
muled  waggon,  too,  huge-wheeled,  shaded  with  green  canvas, 
rolls  its  lumbering  way  into  the  town,  bringing  some  family 
from  Espita  or  Valladolid  ;  and  the  tired  mules,  released  from 
their  rope  and  leather  trappings,  look  about  for  the  dustiest 
spot  in  the  plaza  and  roll  and  roll  and  roll,  backwards  and 
forwards,  in  an  ecstasy  of  freedom,  to  presently  regain  their 
feet,  shake  themselves  like  a  dog  from  the  water,  and  look 
about  for  the  much  desired  drink. 

The  people  come  in  to  enjoy  themselves,  and  perhaps  they 
do.  But  there  seems  little  or  no  real  gaiety  in  the  crowd. 
The  drunken  Indian  is  at  best  a  maudlin  creature,  often 
quarrelsome  and  never  merry  and  boisterous,  and  his  women 
and  children  are  the  most  silent  of  beings  ;  while  over  the 
whole  scene  hangs  the  mephitic  atmosphere  engendered  by 
that  mischievous  superstition,  mainstay  of  a  sickeningly 
hypocritical  ecclesiasticism — that  web  of  priest-cunning 
which  Catholicism  has  woven,  spider-like,  round  the  race  she 
has  enmeshed  and  degraded.  And  so  you  see  the  poor  be- 
wildered, stumbling  Indian  drunkard  wasting  his  last  few 
centavos  on  a  dirty  melting  tallow  dip  which,  with  many 
genuflexions,  he  places  before  a  plaster  St.  Andrew  or  St. 
Peter.  Yes  !  the  Church  is  there,  and  makes  high  holiday. 
It  is  the  padre's  great  harvesting  (later  we  will  describe  an 
amusing  "  corner  "  made  in  candles  by  the  Tizimin  "  curer 
of  souls  "),  and  hour  after  hour  the  Yucatecan  sacristan 
climbs  to  the  belfry  to  summon  the  faithful.  But  the  Indian 
faithful  are  made,  the  wise  padres  know,  the  more  faithful 
by  a  little  liquor ;  and  so  outside  the  church  doors  are  little 
drinking-shops,  and  the  devils  of  superstition  and  drink,  hand 
in  hand,  work  their  evil  will  on  the  weltering  crowd.     All 


VALLADOLID   AND   AFTER  125 

the  burning  day  the  people  sit  huddled  in  the  dust  of  the 
plaza,  and  when  the  chill  black  night  settles  down,  the  light 
streams  from  the  gaping  doorways  of  the  church,  where  the 
whining  sing-song  of  the  priest  and  the  treble  voices  of  the 
boy  choristers  make  one  long  inharmonious  chant,  punctuated 
with  the  metallic  ring  of  cymbals,  while  beneath  the  ink- 
black  shade  of  the  church  walls  the  Indian  families  squat, 
shivering  in  their  blankets,  around  small  fires. 

Our  final  preparations  for  the  journey  to  the  coast  took 
some  days,  and  the  fiesta  was  in  full  swing  before  we  were 
ready  to  leave.  Owing  to  the  swamps,  we  thought  it  well 
to  cut  our  baggage  down  to  vanishing  point.  Having  thus 
almost  attained  "  that  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished  " 
by  aU  good  travellers, — the  toothbrush  and  blanket  state, — 
we  rode  out  from  Tizimin  late  in  December.  Contrario  had 
gone  back  to  VaUadolid,  and  we  had  hired  an  Indian  boy. 
Our  route  lay  for  nine  miles  over  a  fair  road  to  Sucopo.  Thence 
a  narrower  path  led  to  Zonotake,  whence  after  eighteen  miles 
through  the  jungle  we  reached  the  old  Indian  settlement  of 
Occeh.  Here  we  made  a  day  or  two's  stay  at  the  hacienda, 
and  discovered  a  series  of  sepulchral  mounds,  each  crowned 
with  the  ruins  of  a  building.  Below  one  mound  we  found, 
hidden  by  the  tangled  thorn-bushes,  what  appeared  to  be  the 
mouth  of  a  cave.  It  was  little  more  than  two  feet  wide,  and 
looked  iminviting.  But  hoping  it  would  prove  a  passage  to 
the  centre  of  the  mound,  and  first  taking  the  precautionary 
measure  of  throwing  in  a  stone  to  disturb  any  snake  which 
might  be  sheltering,  we  wriggled  in.  It  was  only  a  cave  of 
fair  size  ;  at  the  back  a  mass  of  limestone  had  lately  fallen, 
blocking  up  any  passage-way,  if  indeed  any  existed.  In  Mayan 
burial  mounds  the  corpse  was  nearly  alwaj'^s  deposited  in  a 
well  sunk  from  the  top,  and  often  extraordinarily  deep. 

Between  Occeh  and  the  sea  lay  forty  miles  of  forest.  As 
we  approached  the  coast  the  land  became  low  and  boggy 
till  the  whole  country  seemed  a  swampy  wood.  The  animals 
were  often  floundering  up  to  their  bellies  in  water  and  black 
mud.  In  places  a  stretch  of  water  looking  like  a  river  formed 
the  path  ahead  of  us.  When  night  came  and  the  moon  rose, 
the  forests  seemed  a  piece  of  water  fairyland.  The  mule- 
track  we  followed  lay  between  woodland  so  thick  that  it  seemed 
like  an  ebon  wall  on  either  side  save  where  the  moon,  glinting 
through  the  overgrowth,  speckled  the  path  with  silver  light. 
A  great  silence  reigned,  broken  only  by  the  cry  of  some  night 


126  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

bird  or  the  whispering  rustle  of  the  palm-leaves.  Here  and 
there  the  trees  parted  a  little,  as  we  reached  some  clearing 
where  the  moon  was  reflected  in  the  pools  and  struck  upon  the 
sapota  trees,  making  them,  with  their  smooth  grey  barks,  look 
hke  granite  pillars.  Now  and  again  the  animals  waded  through 
shallow  swamps  around  which  a  thousand  fireflies  flitted,  and 
from  the  edges  of  which  white  ibises  splashed  and  fluttered  up, 
a  ghostly  flock,  at  our  approach.  On  reaching  the  coast  a 
kindly  welcome  was  accorded  us  at  El  Cuyo,  a  tiny  port,  by 
the  Cuban  superintendent  of  a  wood-cutting  company  which 
has  its  headquarters  there. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

IN   THE   FOOTSTEPS   OF   CORTES 

ON  the  coast  from  El  Cuyo  to  Cape  Catoche  and  round  as 
far  east  as  Contoy  Island  are  mounds,  sometimes  many 
miles  apart,  averaging  about  50  or  60  feet  in  height.  We 
examined  some  of  these.  They  are  obviously  artificial,  quite 
roughly  built  of  earth  and  unhewn  stones,  and,  there  can  be 
little  doubt,  were  erected  during  the  later  years  of  the  fifteenth 
and  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  centuries  as  "  look-outs  " 
to  warn  the  tribes  of  the  interior  of  the  approach  of  the 
Spaniards.  Aroimd  them  are  no  traces  of  buildings.  From 
them  smoke-signals  by  day  and  fire  by  night  doubtless  served 
as  a  perfect  means  of  collecting  the  tribes  at  any  threatened 
point. 

From  El  Cuyo,  recrossing  the  salt  lakes  which  for  twenty- 
four  miles  fringe  the  swampy  forest  coast  lands  at  this  part, 
we  took  a  directly  east  course  for  sixty  miles.  Profitless  as  this 
part  of  our  tour  proved  archaeologically,  it  was  geographically 
of  interest.  We  have  been  enabled  to  prepare  a  map  of  this 
north-eastern  comer  of  Yucatan,  which  attains  an  accuracy 
no  map  heretofore  pubUshed  has  attained.  This  district  is  a 
dead  level  of  primeval  forest,  untrodden,  unknown,  stretching 
for  forty  miles  inland  and  fringed  by  swamps  which  are  any- 
thing from  five  to  ten  miles  wide.  Here  and  there  we  discovered 
traces  of  Indian  towns,  in  no  case  suggesting  much  size,  the 
settlements  of  those  sub-tribes  which  ranged  this  woodland 
and  probably  looked  Chichen-wards  for  their  supreme  chief. 
This  belt  of  forest  land  forms  the  gigantic  concession  of  a 
Yucatecan  trading  concern,  "  La  Compania  Agricola,"  founded 
in  1902  ;  but  a  really  infinitesimal  part  comparatively  has  been 
brought  by  them  under  cultivation,  working  with  imported 
labour,  chiefly  from  Cuba  and  Mexico.  From  the  officials — 
all  Cubans — we  received  the  most  perfect  courtesy  and  the 
most  generous  assistance  in   forwarding  our  progress  along 

127 


128  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  coast,  and  we  shall  directly  describe  a  pleasant  stay  we 
made  on  their  chief  sugar  plantation. 

The  days  in  the  forest  were  monotonous  enough.  We 
followed  a  mule-track  used  by  the  woodcutters.  Mile  after 
mile  the  scenery  was  the  same.  There  is  nothing  majestic 
in  the  Yucatecan  forests.  You  see  no  giant  trees,  no  mighty 
fathers  of  the  woodland  towering  up.  The  highest  is  the 
sapota,  from  which  the  gummy  sap  chicle — ^basis  of  all  American 
chewing-gums — is  obtained.  The  characteristic  of  the  forest 
is  its  deadly  stillness.  Thanks  to  the  riverless  nature  of 
Yucatan  there  is  little  animal  life.  The  swamps  afford  a 
haunt  for  the  black  duck,  for  wild  geese,  spoonbills,  ibis  and 
flamingo  ;  and  now  and  again  you  hear  the  hoarse  cry  of  a 
parakeet,  or  a  wild  pig  bustles  through  the  undergrowth. 
But  practically  the  forest  is  dead,  flowerless,  dark  ;  matted, 
tangled  underfoot,  matted,  tangled  overhead  ;  the  long  snake- 
like lianas  hanging  like  fairy  ropes  from  the  highest,  or  weaving 
a  network,  Hke  the  web  of  some  monster  spider,  between  the 
shorter,  trees. 

On  the  site  of  the  ancient  Indian  village  of  Labcah  La 
Compafiia  Agricola  has  built  itself  a  settlement  which  it  has 
rechristened  Solferino.  On  our  arrival  there  we  had  the 
kindest  welcome  possible  from  the  Cuban  superintendent,  who 
entertained  us  at  a  hastily  improvised  lunch  what  time  he 
insisted  on  sending  on  in  advance  of  us  a  message  to  the  officials 
at  the  sugar  plantation  some  ten  miles  off  to  prepare  them 
for  our  visit.  The  company  is  one  of  the  richest  in  Yucatan, 
chiefly  owing  to  the  great  saline  lagoons  over  which  we  had 
passed,  from  which  is  extracted  rough  salt,  for  the  sale  of 
which  they  practically  have  a  monopoly  throughout  Northern 
and  Western  Yucatan,  exporting  large  quantities  as  well  to 
Vera  Cruz  and  other  ports  on  the  Mexican  gulf.  They  have 
also  undertaken  chicle-cutting,  and  at  Solferino  are  opening 
up  many  acres  of  woodland  for  plantations  of  cocoa,  cotton, 
and  banana.  This  latter  settlement  showed  every  sign  of 
their  growing  prosperity,  being  quite  the  model  village,  with 
trim  huts  fronting  on  to  large  corrals  filled  with  cattle  and 
mules.  Thence  late  in  the  afternoon  we  started  for  their 
sugar  farm,  which  is  the  industry  latest  initiated,  but  in  which, 
as  we  afterwards  learnt,  there  is  not  so  much  profit  as  their 
enterprise  deserves,  because  of  the  cheap  American  sugars 
which  are  rapidly  becoming  a  vast  import  throughout  Yucatan. 

Heading  northward  again,  we  were  soon  once  more  among 


IN   THE   FOOTSTEPS   OF    CORTES  129 

the  swamps,  the  forests  thinning  off  and  giving  place  to  a 
low-lying  country,  just  the  steaming  hot,  miasmic  soil  for 
sugar.  A  few  miles  further  and  we  entered  the  first  planta- 
tions, each  side  of  us  stretching  acres  of  the  rusty-green  rush- 
hke  plants  topping  the  purple  yellowy  canes,  each  plantation 
marked  with  a  board  bearing  the  date  of  planting  and  the 
number  of  mecates  ^  in  the  patch.  Ahead  of  us  we  soon  saw 
the  tall  brick  chimney  of  the  sugar  mill,  and  then,  as  far  as  the 
eye  could  see,  sugar-cane  stretched  on  either  side  of  the  track  till 
we  entered  the  settlement.  First  a  street  of  wooden  huts,  each 
built  up  on  a  platform  two  feet  from  the  ground,  and  reached 
by  a  few  wood  steps  like  those  of  a  bathing-machine,  and 
then  a  wide  clearing  ;  on  one  side  the  sugar  mill,  a  huge  shed- 
hke  erection,  on  the  other  the  large  one-storeyed  bungalow, 
built  of  Mexican  cedar,  the  administrative  building  of  the 
plantation.  Here  we  were  greeted  by  the  chief  administrator 
of  the  Company  with  such  courteous  kindness  as  made  us  feel 
deeply  the  disadvantage  we  laboured  under  in  being  such 
poor  Spanish  scholars.  Senor  Sanchez  was  but  fifty,  though 
he  looked  an  old  man.  The  stooping  shoulders,  the  thin 
wasted  figure,  the  hollow  cheeks  and  sunken  eyes,  the  dried 
yellow  skin,  told  only  too  sadly  their  tale  of  bitter  battle 
waged  with  the  fever  fiend.  For  here  where  sugar  grows 
men  wither,  and  the  little  cemetery,  lying  a  mile  seaward  behind 
the  mill  and  estabhshed  but  a  few  years,  could  aheady  boast 
a  larger  census  than  the  settlement. 

We  were  invited  within  to  a  room  which  was  roomy  enough, 
but  unroom-hke  in  that  it  had  no  furniture,  save  half  a  dozen 
rocking-chairs.  The  walls  were  bare,  and  the  boarded  floor 
was  innocent  of  carpet  or  matting  and  unseemly  with  a  myriad 
expectorations.  Here  we  were  introduced  to  the  staff,  a  group 
of  Cubans,  rough,  bearded  men  in  flannel  shirts  and  leather- 
belted  linen  trousers  grimy  with  coal  dust  and  engine  grease. 
These  were  the  engineers  ;  most  of  them  men  who  had  worked 
on  plantations  in  Cuba  before  the  Spanish-American  War 
but  had  found  their  occupation  gone  owing  to  the  dislocation 
of  plantation  work  there,  and  so  had  come  across  to  Yucatan. 
They  were  rough  enough,  but  a  real  relief  after  the  hypocriti- 
cally civil  Yucatecans,  who  had  so  far  done  their  best  to  ruin 
our  tour.  After  a  general  conversation,  if  indeed  it  deserves 
that  adjective,  seeing  that  we  had  to  shoot  the  Spanish  con- 

1  Mecate — a  Mexican  square  measure  equal  to  about  one-tenth  of 
an  acre. 


130  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

versational  rabbit  as  it  dodged  from  rocking-chair  to  rocking- 
chair,  a  move  was  made  to  view  the  engines.  The  chief 
director  of  the  Company  is  a  henequen  miUionaire  and  ship- 
owner, and  no  money  had  been  spared  to  make  the  plant 
perfect.  A  powerful  American  type  of  vertical  engine  of  the 
very  latest  make  worked  the  huge  crusher  and  the  centrifugal 
machine  which  separates  the  sugar  from  the  molasses.  It 
was  Saturday  afternoon  and  the  mill  was  not  working,  but 
the  "hands"  were  loafing  round,  and  we  were  struck  with 
the  number  of  Koreans.  The  administrator  told  us  that  he 
had  quite  a  village  of  these.  They  are  good  workmen,  easily 
satisfied,  and  stand  the  climate  well.  Another  figure  that 
attracted  our  attention  was  a  huge  bewhiskered  nigger,  who 
on  seeing  us  was  all  smiles.  He  proved  to  be  from  Belize, 
British  Honduras,  and  of  course  spoke  good  English.  He  was 
almost  childishly  proud  of  his  rights  as  a  British  subject,  and 
told  us  that  he  had  served  in  one  of  the  West  Indian  regiments. 
He  said  he  liked  the  English  soldier,  and  that  the  officers  were 
always  kind  and  treated  the  black  man  well.  As  we  shook 
his  hand  in  parting,  we  were  glad  to  learn  that  he  was  happy, 
liked  his  work,  and  was  fairly  treated.  The  bulk  of  the  men 
employed  are  Mexicans.  As  the  administrator  explained, 
the  great  difficulty  of  the  Company  is  the  dearth  of  labour : 
"  Poca  gente,  poca  gente,"  he  kept  on  repeating  ("  There 
are  very  few  people  ");  for  the  Indians  around,  who  have  been 
terribly  thinned  off  by  Mexican  massacres,  will  not  work. 
These  Mexican  labourers  are  a  good-for-nothing,  discontented, 
idle  lot,  and  the  calabozo,  or  prison-hut,  close  to  the  engine 
house,  usually  contained  one  or  more  of  these  recalcitrants. 
Drink  is  the  great  evil  among  them,  and  the  most  severe 
restrictions  are  in  force  limiting  the  amount  of  liquor  they 
can  obtain  from  the  Company's  store  during  the  day. 

At  sunset  dinner  was  served  in  an  inner  room  opening  out 
upon  the  filthiest  yard  imaginable.  There  pigs,  dogs,  cats, 
turkeys,  ducks,  and  chickens  ran  riot  and  trespassed  into  the 
dining-room  to  see  what  good  things  the  Sefiores  had  for  dinner. 
Nothing  is  stranger  than  the  Spaniard's  disregard  for  those 
comforts  of  cleanliness  which  can  fill  even  the  humblest  home 
with  "  sweetness  and  light."  Here  was  our  host, — a  Spanish 
Cuban  of  good  birth,  with  the  manners  of  a  prince,  courteous, 
kindly,  cultured, — content  to  dine  off  a  tablecloth  so  stained 
and  filthy  and  thick  with  grime  that  a  Pickford's  van  boy 
would  resent  such  a  cover  for  his  humble  board  at  Caf6  Lockhart 


IN    THE    FOOTSTEPS    OF    CORTES  131 

or  Pearce-and-Plenty.  It  was  nothing  to  him  and  his  genial, 
intelligent  subordinates  that  the  mustard-pot  was  dark  with 
dead  flies,  and  that  ugly  grease  spots  decorated  the  cloth, 
which  was  ringed  with  the  stains  of  myriad  wineglasses. 
They  were  all  hving  hke  pigs  and  indeed  with  them,  for  the 
porkers  came  in  and  rooted  under  the  table  for  the  crumbs 
that  fell  from  the  rich  men.  And  we  were  rich  as  far  as  food 
was  concerned,  for  they  gave  us  an  excellent  dinner  of  chicken 
and  rice,  beef,  pork,  omelette,  boiled  plantains  and  sweet 
potatoes,  with  pineapple  as  desert,  the  waiters  being  two 
Mexican  boys  who  wore  their  straw  hats  and  blankets  all 
through  their  dinner-duties. 

The  next  morning  we  took  our  coffee  with  the  administrator, 
sitting  round  the  same  fly-marked  cloth.  It  was  a  lesson 
in  Spanish  dignity  and  how  a  man  may  tower  above  his  sur- 
roundings to  hear  this  grim  fever-stricken  Spanish  gentleman 
talk  history  and  politics  in  an  almost  stately  old-world  fashion 
amid  such  squalor.  He  insisted  that  we  should  stay  to  take 
breakfast  with  him  at  eleven,  and  we  were  glad  we  did,  for 
we  witnessed  a  curious  scene  well  worth  seeing.  The  previous 
evening  the  men  had  received  their  week's  wages.  As  we 
had  sipped  our  coffee  we  had  heard  the  young  Cuban  clerk 
eternally  calUng  "  Antonio  Rodriguez,"  "  Lucio  Perez,"  and 
such  names  ;  and  then  the  chink  of  Mexican  silver  as  the  money, 
hard  enough  earned  in  those  steaming  hell-hot  sugar  swamps, 
was  paid  through  the  little  iron-barred  pigeon-hole.  But 
there  was  one  of  these  fellows  who  had  gone  away  discontented. 
Each  man  is  paid  according  to  the  amoimt  of  cane  he  cuts. 
This  fellow,  who  had  only  been  employed  a  fortnight,  had  cut 
none  because  he  declared  he  had  been  engaged  as  an  overseer, 
not  a  hand  labourer.  But  during  the  two  weeks  he  had  had 
food  and  drink  supplied  him  on  credit,  and  now  he  had  come 
up  for  pay.  The  clerk  told  him,  naturally  enough,  that  he 
would  be  paid  when  he  did  some  work,  and  not  before.  So 
shortly  after  breakfast  the  man  appeared  before  the  pay- 
office  to  once  more  air  his  wrongs.  The  clerk  referred  the 
case  to  the  administrator,  who  was  talking  with  us,  and  the 
latter  crossed  over  to  the  office.  A  minute  later  we  heard 
angry  voices,  and  then,  to  our  amazement,  the  administrator 
dashed  out  of  his  office  through  the  room  where  we  sat  and 
simply  rushed  at  the  grumbler.  The  latter  backed  off  as  Senor 
Sanchez  made  for  him,  apparently  to  kick  or  strike  him. 

Calling  out  threats,  he  disappeared,  and  we  thought  the 


132  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

scene  was  over  ;  but  it  was  obviously  only  a  dress  rehearsal, 
for  he  presently  reappeared  brandishing  his  machete.  It 
was  really  quite  exciting  :  the  man  was  evidently  going  to  run 
amuck.  He  was  a  sturdy  fellow  too,  bullet-headed,  bulldog- 
jawed,  evil-eyed  :  just  the  man  for  mischief.  There  was 
quite  a  panic  in  the  office.  One  old  clerk  picked  up  a  long 
pole,  the  administrator  seized  a  workmanlike  walking-stick ; 
but  the  coolest  of  the  lot  was  a  young  Cuban  who,  with  hands 
in  his  trouser  pockets,  went  forward  to  parley  with  the  man. 
It  seemed  that  the  outburst  of  the  administrator  had  been 
due  to  the  man's  personal  insolence,  and  that  he  had  then 
ordered  him  to  surrender  his  machete.  This  he  was  now 
brandishing,  and  it  certainly  looked  like  murder ;  but  it  was 
soon  obvious  that  there  was  more  cheap  melodrama  than 
business  about  the  fellow.  He  went  down  on  one  knee  and 
appealed  to  heaven  to  witness  that  he  would  rather  give  up 
his  life  than  his  machete  ;  and  then,  as  the  young  unarmed 
Cuban  approached  him,  he  got  up  and  retreated  a  few  steps 
further.  But  in  such  matters  he  who  retires  is  lost,  and 
slowly  but  surely  round  him  were  extending,  like  the  horns 
of  a  Zulu  impi,  a  semicircle  of  officials,  in  the  centre  the 
administrator,  his  fever-yellowed  face  grey  now,  but  with 
anger,  not  fear,  his  whole  emaciated  figure  expressive  of  an 
almost  demoniacal  rage.  So  the  fellow  made  a  bolt  for  it  to 
his  hut ;  and  when,  some  half  an  hour  later,  we  started  for  the 
cocLst,  we  saw  him,  as  we  looked  back,  disarmed  and  being 
led  in  by  the  plantation  poUce  to  cool  his  heels  for  forty-eight 
hours  in  the  calabozo. 

The  few  miles  which  separated  the  sugar  plantation  from 
the  sea  were  a  kind  of  tropical  saltings,  mud  and  sparse  grass 
alive  with  small  land-crabs  which  galloped  in  hundreds  to 
gain  the  shelter  of  boulder  or  fallen  tree-trunk  as  we  ap- 
proached. With  the  utmost  courtesy  Seiior  Sanchez  had 
insisted  upon  providing  us  with  a  boat  for  our  journey  to 
Holboch,  lying  four  miles  from  the  little  rickety  wooden  quay 
which  constitutes  the  Company's  port  of  Chiquila.  Holboch 
— sixteen  miles  long,  low-lying,  narrow — is  quite  the  island 
of  one's  tropical  dreams,  a  harmony  of  sparkling  sand,  blue 
sea,  and  palm  trees.  An  avenue  of  palms  leads  to  the  fisher- 
settlement,  a  square  of  wood  huts,  painted  bright  blue  and 
white,  built  round  a  plaza  of  sand.  We  had  the  bad  luck 
to  arrive  at  the  moment  when  the  fisher  folk  were  about  to 
launch  themselves  upon  a  sea  of  dissipation  in  celebration  of 


IN   THE   FOOTSTEPS   OF   CORTES  133 

the  New  Year.  Thus  there  were  few  who  wished  to  launch  on 
the  other  sea.  But  Yucatecans  will  do  anything  for  money, 
and  we  soon  found  a  boat,  a  dory  of  three  tons,  "  La  Esper- 
anza,"  and  a  captain.  Short,  stout,  bow-legged,  with  rolling 
rolUcking  walk  and  eyes  twinkling  under  shaggy  eyebrows,  a 
big  flap  hat  worn  rakishly  over  one  eye,  he  was  such  a  ludicrous 
mixture  of  the  truculent  and  the  comic  that  we  christened 
him  "  the  amiable  smuggler."  But  no  Yucatecan  can  keep 
his  word,  and  our  new  friend's  amiability  was  not  proof  against 
this  racial  failing.  Thus,  having  settled  the  terms  overnight 
for  the  boat  which  was  to  take  us  round  Cape  Catoche,  we  were 
astonished  to  find  him  at  our  hut-door  the  next  morning 
declaring  he  must  have  another  four  dollars  a  day.  It  was 
all  the  fault  of  the  New  Year  festivities.  The  poor  fellow 
wanted  to  get  drunk,  and  he  felt  that  if  this  could  not  be, 
he  must  receive  heavy  compensation.  We  compromised  the 
matter  by  adding  one  dollar  to  the  daily  pay  and  agreeing  to 
postpone  our  sailing  till  the  New  Year  was  in.  We  very 
fooUshly  advanced  him  and  the  two  other  Yucatecans  who 
were  to  form  our  crew  thirty  dollars,  and  paid  for  our  mistake 
by  being  obliged  to  spend  the  rest  of  the  day  watching  the 
dipsomaniacal  trio  to  check  their  Gadarenic  descent  into 
senselessness. 

The  Holbochians  were  not  quite  replicas  of  those  proverbial 
South  Sea  Islanders  who  gained  a  precarious  living  by  taking 
in  each  other's  washing  ;  but  their  relations  were,  if  anything, 
even  more  intimate  ;  for  everybody  appeared  to  be  every- 
body else's  brother,  sister,  cousin  or  aunt.  We  were  told 
that  the  whole  village — some  three  hundred — represented  the 
ramifications  of  practically  only  two  families,  and  the  sickly 
pallor  of  some  of  the  boys  and  girls  suggested  that  this  in- 
breeding was  already  making  its  evil  influence  felt.  There 
was  not  an  Indian  in  the  place.  It  was  a  community  of 
Yucatecan  fishermen,  as  indeed  are  most  of  the  inhabited 
islands  as  far  south  as  Ascension  Bay.  They  lead  an  easy- 
going, loitery  life  ;  swinging  the  sunny  hours  away  in  their 
hammocks,  and  loafing  the  evenings  away  drinking  in  the 
tiny  spirit-stores  presided  over  by  a  huge,  bloated  Dutch 
immigrant  and  his  equally  fat  frau,  or  love-making  among 
the  thorn-bushes  on  the  beach.  Occasionally  they  fish  or 
tfike  a  job  as  one  of  the  hands  of  the  small  trading  schooners 
which  ply  from  Progreso  to  Cozumel ;  but  life  is  cheap,  and 
they  do  as  little  honest  work  as  they  reasonably  can. 


134  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

This  indeed  is  the  average  Yucatecan  ;  an  easy-going 
creature,  fond  of  women,  fonder  of  drink,  and  fondest  of 
dancing.  If  there  is  anything  which  awakens  the  Yucatecan 
soul,  it  is  the  charms  of  la  haile  (the  ball).  The  Holbochians 
took  it  rather  hardly  that  we  had  descended  upon  them  at 
such  an  intempestive  moment.  They  would  have  so  much 
liked  to  have  given  themselves  wholeheartedly  to  the  con- 
genial task  of  dogging  the  footsteps  of  "  los  Americanos,"  as 
they  insisted  upon  calling  us,  and  jeering  us  at  intervals  ; 
but  they  really  had  scarcely  time  to  spare,  for  the  whole 
village  was  agog  over  the  New  Year's  Eve  Ball.  Most  Yucate- 
can villages  have  dancing  halls  ;  Holboch  had.  It  was  a  large 
palm-leaf-thatched  open  shed  at  the  corner  of  the  plaza, 
wood-floored.  Round  it  were  ranged  wood  benches  ;  from 
the  centre  roof-pole  hung  two  or  three  oil  lamps,  and  the 
decorations  were  flags.     Dancing  began  at  about  eight. 

The  American  traveller  Stephens  was  loud  in  his  praises  of 
Yucatecan  dancing.  Perhaps  it  has  altered  in  the  last  sixty 
years.  It  certainly  seemed  to  us  the  dullest  performance 
we  had  ever  witnessed.  Those  mechanical  toys,  metal  trays 
upon  which  are  fixed  several  couples  of  tin  figures  which, 
when  wound  up,  go  slowly  round  and  round  in  a  melancholy 
way  on  the  same  spot,  give  about  the  best  idea  of  a  Yucatecan 
dance.  There  is  no  life,  no  spirited  movement,  no  gaiety 
in  the  entertainment.  Perhaps  this  is  really  the  fault  of  the 
orchestra.  It  is  difficult  even  to  speak  of  Yucatecan  music 
without  a  shudder.  It  is  curious  that  a  people  so  devoted  to 
dancing,  even  if  it  is  only  of  the  humming-top  type,  should 
have  no  music  in  them.  They  seem  to  be  ignorant  of  air, 
tune,  or  time.  Their  dance  music  is  one  long  droning  chant, 
fiat,  stale,  and  unprofitable,  absolutely  maddening  in  its 
reiteration,  reminiscent  of  childhood's  jest  about  "  the  tune 
the  cow  died  to."  The  band  at  Holboch  consisted  of  a  kettle- 
drum and  a  concertina.  There  was  no  fixed  orchestra  ;  any- 
body who  was  handy  beat  the  drum,  and  everybody  in  turn 
had  a  go  at  the  concertina  ;  each  performer  adding  his  little 
best  to  the  musicless  horror  of  the  noise.  There  appeared 
to  be  no  fixed  step  ;  some  couples  hopped  roimd,  some  went 
round  with  a  sliding  slither,  and  others  seemed  to  be  walking 
round  rapidly.  As  long  as  the  music  lasted  the  men's  faces 
bore  a  look  of  concentrated  earnestness,  the  girls'  that  of  sub- 
missive boredom.  When  the  music  stopped,  the  girls  were 
placed  on  the  benches,  and  the  men  walked  out  into  the  plaza 


IN    THE    FOOTSTEPS    OF    CORTES  135 

and  stood  staring  at  them.  We  were  much  interested  in  one 
performer,  a  young  fellow  of  about  twenty.  We  had  seen  him 
earUer  in  the  day  engaged  in  bathing  in  a  pail,  a  method  of 
ablution  requiring  much  persistence.  And  now,  in  the  most 
spotless  of  hnen  breeches  and  coloured  cotton  vest,  he  had 
thrown  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the  evening's  enjoyment. 
He  danced  as  long  as  the  drum  beat,  and  then  he  put  his  partner 
upon  the  shelf,  and  came  out  into  the  plaza  and  mopped  his 
forehead  till  the  drum  began  again. 

We  bore  with  the  scene  for  some  hours,  because  we  held 
a  "  watching  brief  "  in  the  interests  of  the  cruise  of  the  "  Esper- 
anza  "  ;  for  our  "  amiable  smuggler  "  was  very  drunk,  and  we 
hoped,  by  keeping  an  eye  on  him,  to  prevent  him  from  be- 
coming drunker  and  passing  into  a  comatose  condition.  He 
dehvered  himself  into  our  hands,  for  he  came  up  and  invited 
us  to  dance  with  him,  and  as  we  were  due  to  start  soon  after 
midnight  we  made  this  outrageous  proposal  an  excuse  for 
putting  him  in  charge  of  the  Jefe,  who  promised  to  see  him 
into  his  hammock  for  a  few  hours'  sleep  before  we  wanted 
him.  The  second  man  was  so  far  gone  that  there  was  no 
reasoning  with  him.  We  had  to  let  him  lie  where  he  was  in 
the  plaza  and  trust  to  the  night  air  to  bring  him  round  by  the 
time  we  sailed.  With  the  third  sailor,  who  was  sober,  we 
took  the  boat  round  to  where  the  deeper  water  allowed  of 
her  being  ballasted  and  loaded. 

By  the  time  the  boat  was  ready  it  was  fast  approaching 
midnight.  The  dance  was  over ;  the  girls  had  left  their 
shelves  and  gone  home  to  their  hammocks  ;  the  lamps  were 
out ;  and  a  few  belated  revellers  were  straggling  about  or 
lying  senseless  on  the  sand,  which  glistened  snow-white  in  the 
moonhght.  We  found  our  skipper  in  his  hut.  He  had  pulled 
himself  together,  and  he  came  with  us  to  find  the  first  mate. 
The  latter  was  in  his  hammock  in  a  drunken  sleep,  and  refused 
to  answer  to  our  repeated  knockings.  We  were  for  starting 
without  him  ;  but  the  amiable  smuggler  said  he  had  advanced 
him  ten  dollars  and  he  had  got  to  come.  He  evidently  knew  his 
man,  for  he  called  out  some  opprobrious  words  in  Spanish. 
We  did  not  catch  what  they  were  ;  but  a  well-trained  ferret 
never  made  a  rabbit  bolt  from  his  hole  as  quick  as  those 
choice  epithets  brought  the  toper  from  his  hammock.  The 
hut  door  burst  open,  and  before  the  captain  could  reaUse  he 
had  overdone  it,  the  fuddled  Nicolas  rushed  at  him  and  hit  him 
full  in  the  face.     In  a  moment  all  was  disorder.    The  wives 


136  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

of  the  combatants  rushed  out  to  act  as  seconds,  and  half  a 
dozen  neighbours  tumbled  from  their  hammocks  and  rushed 
over  to  see  the  battle.  But  a  Yucatecan  prize-fight  under 
Queensberry  rules  did  not  form  part  of  our  programme,  and 
we  successfully  intervened,  seizing  the  struggling  men,  and 
held  on  to  them  till  they  had  spluttered  out  the  worst  of  their 
rage,  when  the  storm  ceased  as  suddenly  as  it  had  begun  and 
they  fell  upon  each  other's  necks,  calling  each  other  "  bueno 
amigo  "  (good  friend).  Escorting  them  down  to  the  boat 
and  leaving  them  to  get  the  sail  up,  we  returned  to  our  hut, 
shouldered  our  baggage,  and  carried  it  to  the  beach.  As  the 
New  Year  came  in,  we  were  thigh-deep  in  the  tepid  water,  a 
pale  eau-de-Nil  in  the  moonlight,  wading  backwards  and 
forwards  to  the  "  Esperanza."  It  was  nearly  two,  however, 
before  we  got  under  way,  and  the  dawn  of  the  New  Year's 
Day  found  us  but  some  ten  miles  down  the  coast. 

The  shores  we  now  explored  were  historic  indeed.  We 
were  retracing  the  course  of  Cortes  as  he  cruised  round  from 
the  island  of  Cozumel,  whither  we  were  bound.  But  if  they 
were  historic,  they  were  singularly  uninteresting.  The  woods 
come  down  to  within  a  few  feet  of  the  beach,  woods  which 
never  deserve  the  title  of  forests  and  yet  are  so  impenetrable 
that  no  one  who  has  not  tried  to  cut  his  way  through  would 
believe  it.  About  midday  we  made  a  landing  near  to  where 
it  was  said  ruins  existed,  and  cut  our  way  through  two  miles 
of  bush.  Ruins  we  found,  but  they  were  of  no  moment,  and 
if  they  were  Indian  they  were  certainly  post-Conquest.  It 
was  a  broiling  hot  day,  and  our  eyes  suffered  from  the  sand- 
glare.  On  reaching  the  beach  again,  we  were  tempted  to  have 
a  bathe,  though  this  is  risky  work  at  any  part  of  the  coast  of 
Yucatan,  for  there  are  more  sharks  to  the  square  mile  than 
there  are  probably  in  any  other  part  of  the  world.  But  it  was 
far  too  hot  for  us  to  be  very  prudent,  and  we  had  a  delicious 
plunge,  coming  out  none  too  soon  though,  for  while  we  were 
putting  on  our  shirts  we  saw  Master  Shark  showing  his  fins 
a  yard  or  two  from  where  we  had  been  revelling  in  the  green 
water. 

We  made  many  landings,  but  they  were  quite  disappoint- 
ing in  their  results.  Cape  Catoche  itself  is  a  low  spit  of  sand 
separated  from  the  mainland  by  a  shallow  channel  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide.  Here  a  light  has  been  recently 
installed.  The  whole  region  for  miles  round  is  desolation. 
Just  beyond  the  cape  the  coastline  breaks  into  a  large  bay, 


IN    THE    FOOTSTEPS    OF    CORTES  137 

an  immense  wooded  oval  of  shallow  water,  guarded  seaward 
by  a  natural  breakwater  of  sand  and  entered  by  two  narrow 
waterways,  east  and  west.  This  great  inlet,  framed  in  thick 
woods,  its  sunlit,  gently  rippling  surface  dotted  with  beds  of 
reeds  and  straggling  water-flowers,  is  the  haunt  of  the  sea 
birds.  As  we  stole  into  their  soUtude,  vast  flocks  of  ibis,  of 
gulls,  black  duck,  sandpipers,  and  the  hideous  brown  pelicans 
rose  and  made  off ;  while,  fairest  of  all  sights  in  the  brilliant 
light,  was  a  flight  of  flamingoes,  a  pink  cloud  passing  over- 
head. 

There  can  be  Uttle  doubt  that  this  bay  was  the  scene 
of  that  first  landing  of  Cortes  on  the  American  mainland 
which  was  destined  so  largely  to  shape  the  future  of  Central 
America.  It  was  curious  to  land  and  wander  in  the  desolate 
woods,  the  battle-ground  of  four  centuries  past,  picturing 
to  oneself  the  romance  of  it  all.  Further  eastward  we  put 
in  to  examine  some  ruins  which  showed  above  the  trees.  They 
proved  to  be  those  of  a  Catholic  church  and  monastery,  probably 
eighteenth-century  work.  The  church  was  full  of  bats,  which 
fluttered  down  from  the  mildewed  walls  frightened  at  the 
unwonted  intrusion.  Here  and  there  along  the  coast  south- 
ward from  the  cape  we  found  signs  of  ancient  Indian  settle- 
ments. The  ruins  were  in  no  way  majestic,  but  were  probably 
reUcs  of  outlying  fisher  settlements,  and  only  interesting 
because  significant  of  the  building  zeal  of  the  pre-Conquest 
Indians.  This  great  sweep  of  coastline  must  have  ever  been 
what  it  is  to-day — swampy  and  impassable  ;  in  no  way 
inviting  to  the  establishment  of  large  cities  such  as  Chichen 
and  Uxmal,  but  used  rather  as  a  vast  hunting  ground  by  the 
tribes  of  the  interior. 

Even  in  typical  tropic  weather  there  is  much  discomfort 
in  life  in  a  three-ton  boat.  So  far  the  weather  had  been 
perfect ;  and  once  round  the  cape,  we  got  the  full  benefit  of 
the  trade-winds  which  blow  here  all  the  year  round.  As 
Dry  den  in  his  Annus  Mirahilis  writes  : 

•'  But  now,  the  Cape  once  doubled,  fear  no  more  ; 
A  constant  trade  wind  will  securely  blow 
And  gently  lay  us  on  the  spicy  shore.** 

Our  "  spicy  shore  "  was  the  fruitful  island  of  Cozumel,  of 
the  fertile  beauty  of  which  we  had  heard  such  glowing  accounts  ; 
but  once  round  the  cape,  our  troubles  proved  by  no  means 
over.     After  a  few  days  the  weather  broke.     The  night  was 


138  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

perfect.  A  full  moon  bathed  the  quiet  sea  and  the  wooded 
coasts  in  a  wonderful  silver  light,  and  as  we  stared  up  into 
the  sky  from  our  bed  of  sand-ballast  sacks  in  the  bottom  of 
the  boat,  it  seemed  as  if  the  stars  had  never  shone  so  brightly. 
But  with  the  dawn  we  ran  into  the  fringe  of  what  is  known 
in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  as  a  "  norther  "  ;  and  the  weather  ahead 
looked  so  dirty  that  we  took  refuge  in  a  tiny  islet  called  Isla 
Arena  (Sand  Island).  It  was  an  ideally  lonely  Robinson 
Crusoey  spot.  A  few  deserted  huts  marked  it  as  the  occasional 
home  of  passing  fishermen.  We  swung  our  hammocks  in 
that  which  had  the  most  water-tight  thatch,  and  then  walked 
round  the  island  with  the  guns  in  search  of  duck.  In  the 
centre  was  a  touching  little  cemetery  ;  a  square  of  sand  humbly 
marked  off  with  sea-shells  ;  the  graves — six  of  them — each 
with  a  rudely  fashioned  wooden  cross  ;  and  black  spirit -bottles, 
which  had  once  served  as  flower  vases,  stood  around.  It  is 
a  wild  life  these  Yucatecan  fishermen  often  lead,  and  cLS  we 
stood  bareheaded  by  this  "  Garden  of  Sleep,"  those  haunting 
hnes  on  Stevenson's  Samoan  tomb  came  to  our  minds  : 

"  Here  he  lies  where  he  longed  to  be. 
Home  is  the  fisherman,  home  from  the  sea  ; 
The  hunter  home  from  the  hill." 

Here  they  rested,  lulled  by  the  eternal  sigh  of  the  ocean  so 
long  their  home. 

The  weather  had  scarcely  improved  when  towards  dawn 
we  made  a  start  for  Isla  de  Mujeres.  Had  we  known  what  was 
ahead  of  us,  we  should  have  made  Sand  Island  our  home  for 
yet  another  day,  till  the  sea  had  had  time  to  quiet  down.  In 
the  deep  gloom  which  heralded  the  approach  of  another  day 
we  tacked  round  Cayo  Sucio  (Dirty  Point)  and  passed  Rat 
and  Pelican  Keys,  two  miniature  isles.  The  sea  was  rough 
and  choppy,  and  a  mile  or  so  out  a  nasty  squall  came  up  and 
we  hove  to,  taking  in  all  sail,  the  little  boat  pitching  and 
tossing  like  a  walnut  shell,  while  we  crouched  under  mackintosh 
sheets  to  keep  as  dry  as  was  possible.  Thence,  when  the  sky 
cleared,  we  had  a  straight  run  down  the  coast.  The  amiable 
smuggler  had  ominously  talked  of  a  via  angusta  (narrow  way) ; 
but  our  Spanish  was  so  limited  that  his  explanations  were 
lost  on  us,  and  his  uneasiness,  as  he  stared  weatherwards, 
we  took  for  the  nervousness  all  Yucatecans  show  in  any  risk. 

It  was  about  an  hour  after  dawn  that  away  to  our  left — 
so  far  that  it  sounded  hke  the  last  thunder-mutterings  of  a 


IN   THE   FOOTSTEPS   OF   CORTES  139 

storm  long  past — we  heard  a  low  murmuring.  We  looked 
seaward,  and  the  captain  pointed  to  the  horizon  with  the 
words  "  las  rocas."  Across  the  dreary  waste  of  water,  its 
night-grey  jdelding  to  a  sickly  green  in  the  chill  morning  glare, 
it  was  at  first  hard  to  see  anything.  Then,  as  we  stared,  we 
saw  at  first  a  long,  thin,  black  line,  white-topped,  starting 
leftwards  some  five  miles  off  and  running  in  till  its  end  was 
lost  in  the  rollers  ahead.  Evenly  marked  it  seemed,  like  the 
black  and  white  painting  on  a  giant  ship's  hull.  And  then, 
in  the  minutes  as  we  neared,  the  white  became  broken  into 
cloudlets,  showing  up  quick  in  succession  like  smoke  of  an 
engine  above  the  edge  of  a  railway  cutting.  And  quickly 
the  murmuring  turned  into  a  booming,  like  the  hum  of  a 
great  city's  traffic  heard  from  afar  ;  and  the  booming  into  a 
low  intense  thunder.  And  as  we  passed  into  the  tumbling 
waters,  the  even  lines  were  gone  and  we  saw  an  endless  belt  of 
black  coral  rock  closing  our  whole  horizon.  The  "  Esperanza  " 
was  heading  for  the  reef  at  seven  knots.  We  ran  to  within 
half  a  mile  ;  and  the  thimder  of  the  Atlantic,  as  it  broke  upon 
the  demon-shaped  jags  of  coral,  bursting  in  clouds  of  spray 
forty  feet  high,  was  hke  the  dry  roaring  of  wild  beasts.  The 
tiller  went  round,  and  we  veered  a  point  or  two  more  into 
the  wind  ;  and  then  straight  ahead  we  saw  why  the  amiable 
smuggler  had  steered  up  so  close.  To  our  right  a  smaller  line 
of  reef,  some  two  hundred  yards  long,  bent  out  from  the  shore 
to  meet  the  three-mile  leftward  curve.  Between  the  shore 
and  the  coral  was  no  safe  way  even  for  boats  of  three  feet 
draught  such  as  ours.  Ahead  lay  the  only  way — ^between  the 
deadly  corals. 

It  was  la  via  angusta,  and  to  us  landlubbers  it  looked  like 
the  gate  of  a  water-hell ;  an  ocean  fiend's  cauldron  of  bubbling, 
leaping  grey  water.  As  the  two  lines  of  rock  closed  in  on  us, 
the  sea  rolled  down  from  the  seaward  reefs  in  great  slate- 
coloured  foamless  rollers.  From  the  level  of  the  little  boat 
they  looked  hke  moving  hills.  The  wind  was  blowing  fresh 
on  the  quarter,  and  the  skipper  had  put  the  boat  towards  the 
bigger  reef  lest  we  should  be  blown  clean  on  the  smaller.  There 
was  not  a  dog's  chance  for  us  if  we  capsized,  and  an  inch- 
twist  wrong  of  the  helm  and  we  must.  One  second  we  sank 
low  between  rollers,  looking  down  a  lead-grey  alley-way  of 
water.  The  next  we  were  flung  up,  light  as  an  egg-shell,  on 
the  crest  of  a  wave,  balancing  there  long  enough  to  measure 
with  straining  eyes  the  distance  between  us  and  the  hell  of 


140  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

coral.  The  next  half -hour  seemed  the  longest  we  had  ever 
lived.  It  looked  as  if  nothing  but  a  miracle  of  seamanship 
could  save  the  boat.  We  heard  the  captain  mutter  a  prayer 
to  the  Virgin,  and  the  sailors,  their  yellow  faces  now  ashen- 
grey,  crouched  for'ad  clinging  to  the  shrouds,  the  spray  soaking 
their  thin  cottons.  When  we  ran  once  more  into  the  open 
Atlantic,  we  cared  not  for  the  fiercer  waves  which  charged  us, 
breaking  over  the  bows  and  drenching  us,  for  we  had  faced 
what  was  worse  than  open  sea.  These  reefs,  the  "  graveyard 
of  the  Yucatan  Channel,"  are  the  terror  of  the  locality  ;  and 
when,  wet  and  numbed,  we  reached  the  picturesque  little 
pueblo  of  Dolores  in  Islade  Mujeres  three  miles  further  on,  the 
Yucatecan  fishermen  collected,  amazed,  on  the  beach  to  hear 
how  an  open  boat  had  lived  through  the  deadly  passage  on 
such  a  morning. 

We  had  risked  much  to  visit  the  island ;  but  archaeologically 
it  was  not  worth  it.  Here  it  was  that  the  Spaniards  in  15 17 
got  their  very  first  sight  of  those  stone  buildings  of  Central 
America  which  were  as  much  a  marvel  to  them  as  they  are 
to  us  to-day.  The  historians  of  the  Conquest  describe  a 
temple  of  stone,  surrounded  by  fruit  trees  and  sweet-scented 
shrubs,  and  approached  by  well-laid  steps.  Within,  the  air 
was  heavy  with  the  smell  of  incense  which  burnt  in  stone  and 
earthenware  vessels  before  female  idols  clothed  in  cotton 
petticoats  with  the  bosoms  "  decently  covered."  Before 
these  images  were  well-ordered  files  of  women-ministrants, 
who  served  in  the  temple.  Hence  Cordoba  called  the  island 
Isla  de  Mujeres — Isle  of  Women.  But  all  this  old-time  glory 
has  disappeared.  The  only  village  edges  with  its  whitewashed 
huts,  their  doors  painted  a  light  blue  or  green,  the  shallow 
semicircle  of  sand  which  forms  the  islet's  only  anchorage  ; 
behind  this  row  of  cottages  the  tiny  cross-streets  are  almost 
knee-deep  in  its  pale  yellow  glitter.  Away  southward  stretches 
a  barren  waste,  six  miles  long  and  never  much  more  than  a 
mile  wide,  of  rock  and  sand,  over  which  clambers  a  coarse- 
leafed  sea-vine,  a  coarser  thistly  plant,  with  here  and  there  a 
clump  of  fan-palms.  Only  at  the  extreme  southern  end  on  a 
rocky  bluff  stands  a  relic  of  the  dead  people.  It  is  a  solid- 
built  structure  about  18  feet  square  on  the  outside,  and  con- 
taining two  rooms  14  feet  by  6  each.  There  is  no  ornamenta- 
tion or  hieroglyphics  on  it,  but  outside,  facing  east,  are  two 
stone  ledges,  like  plinths  for  statues,  upon  which,  local  rumour 
has  it,  once  stood  two  gigantic  statues  of  women.     Near  at 


IN    THE    FOOTSTEPS    OF    CORTES  141 

hand  is  a  small  Spanish  watch-tower,  all  to  pieces,  a  contrast 
to  the  well-preserved  Indian  stone-work. 

We  intended  making  the  island  a  base  for  iurther  explora- 
tion of  the  east  coast,  and  hired  a  hut  which  stood  at  the  end 
of  the  village  on  a  steep  rock.  The  reefs  had  so  completely 
shattered  the  nerves  of  our  crew  that  they  declared  it  im- 
possible to  proceed  to  Cozumel  in  the  "  Esperanza."  Our  belief 
in  the  proverbial  halcyon  calm  of  tropic  seas  had  also  been 
much  shaken  by  our  morning's  experiences,  and  we  were 
inchned  to  agree  with  the  frightened  sailors.  So,  paying  them 
up  to  the  next  morning,  we  discharged  them,  determining  to 
hire  a  larger  boat  for  the  rest  of  our  cruise.  But  this  was  not 
the  denouement  which  the  amiable  smuggler  hoped  or  wished, 
and  he  insolently  declared  that  we  must  pay  him  for  so  many 
more  days  as  it  took  him  to  return  to  the  island  of  Holboch. 
When  we  refused,  he  muttered  something  about  reporting  us 
to  the  Jefe  and  disappeared.  We  thought  no  more  about 
it,  and  busied  ourselves  in  settUng  in  to  our  new  quarters. 
About  half  an  hour  later  we  were  sitting  in  our  hammocks 
polishing  our  top  boots  with  soft  soap,  when  a  long  scraggy- 
looking  man  arrived  who  declared  himself  to  be  a  pohceman. 
He  certainly  did  not  look  Uke  one,  but  he  brought  a  message 
from  the  Jefe  PoUtico  that  "  los  otros  hombres  "  (the  other 
men)  were  to  appear  before  that  functionary  at  two  o'clock. 
This  was  altogether  too  much  for  our  British  blood.  We  had 
so  far  throughout  our  tour  borne  the  Yucatecan  fool  as  gladly 
as  we  could,  but  now  our  cup  was  running  over.  In  an  out- 
burst of  Spanish,  utterly  ungrammatical,  but  very  much  to 
the  point,  we  consigned  him  and  all  Jefes  to  an  even  warmer 
place  than  Isla  de  Mujeres,  and  bade  him  return  with  all  speed 
to  his  chief  and  tell  that  gentleman  that  we  were  not  "  the 
other  men,"  but  British  subjects,  bearing  passports  from 
the  Federal  Government ;  that  nothing  would  induce  us  to 
appear  at  two  or  at  any  other  hour,  and  that  if  the  Jefe  wanted 
to  see  us  he  would  have  to  come  to  us,  not  we  go  to  him.  We 
were  very  angry,  and  the  miserable  Yucatecan  creature  backed 
out  of  our  hut  abashed. 

We  considered  the  incident  closed,  and  continued  polishing 
our  boots.  But  about  half  an  hour  later,  noticing  a  commo- 
tion at  our  hut  door  we  looked  out  and,  to  our  amazement, 
found  a  dense  crowd  assembled  led  by  a  fat  Yucatecan,  wearing 
a  pith  helmet.  This  was  Seiior  El  Jefe,  and  behind  him, 
ranged  in  the  order  of  their  rank,  were  aU  the  officials  of  the 


142  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

island.  In  the  background  stood  the  scraggy  poHceman, 
who  certainly  thought  that  we  were  now  about  to  meet  the 
due  reward  of  our  temerity  in  flouting  the  thunderbolts  of 
this  Caribbean  island- Jove  and  to  be  hanged,  drawn  and 
quartered  to  "  make  a  Yucatecan  holiday,"  We  invited  the 
Jefe  into  the  hut,  and  in  a  few  sentences  explained  that  we 
intended  no  personal  affront  to  him,  seeing  that  until  that 
moment  we  had  never  had  the  pleasure  of  clapping  eyes  on 
him.  But  that  the  insolence  of  the  message  was  such  as,  in 
Dogberry's  words,  was  "  most  tolerable  and  not  to  be  en- 
dured "  ;  and  that  we  therefore  could  not  apologise  for  our 
refusal  to  obey  it.  The  Jefe,  as  we  afterwards  learnt,  was  a 
thorough  old  rogue,  but  he  had  a  fund  of  common  sense.  In 
a  few  minutes  we  had  explained  to  him  that  the  amiable 
smuggler  had  already  been  paid  his  full  wages  and  we  were 
shaking  hands  all  round,  the  Jefe  assuring  us  that  the  message 
had  been  misdelivered  :  that  he  had  used  the  word  supplica 
(supplicates),  not  manda  (demands),  in  citing  us  to  his  court. 
It  was  delightful  to  watch  the  evident  chagrin  of  the  poHceman 
and  the  barefooted  crowd  who  had  hoped  to  see  "  los  Ingleses  " 
haul  down  their  colours. 


CHAPTER  IX 

EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS 

ACROSS  the  shallow  blue  harbour  of  Isla  de  Mujeres  and 
a  four-mile  stretch  of  the  Yucatan  Channel,  clear  as 
crystal,  its  small  ripphng  waves  flecked  to  foam  by  the  trade 
winds,  lies  the  eastern  mainland  of  Yucatan.  Here  on  the 
low  wooded  shore,  in  direct  Une  with  the  southern  point  of  the 
island,  are  the  ruins  of  El  Meco.  Our  new  boat  was  some 
two  or  three  tons  heavier  than  the  "  Esperanza."  Our  captain 
and  its  owner  was  a  Yucatecan  fisherman,  Lucio  Sanchez, 
who  some  years  before,  to  avoid  service  in  the  National  Guard, 
had  migrated  to  Key  West  and  become  an  American  citizen. 
He  had  now  returned  to  his  native  island,  had  taken  unto 
himself  a  Yucatecan  wife,  and  was  the  happy  father  of  four 
children.  In  all  our  dealings  with  him,  which  extended  over 
several  weeks,  we  found  him  scrupulously  honest,  and  in  all 
ways  a  marked  contrast  to  his  detestable  fellow-countrymen. 
If  this  were  the  result  of  two  years'  residence  at  Key  West, 
it  is  surely  a  happy  augury  of  the  improvement  which  is  Hkely 
to  take  place  in  the  Yucatecan  people  when  they  form,  as 
they  inevitably  will,  a  portion,  however  unworthy,  of  the  Land 
of  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 

Besides  Lucio  our  crew  consisted  of  his  half-brother,  a 
handsome  black-eyed  lad  of  sixteen,  who  looked  far  older  and 
rejoiced  in  the  girUsh  name  of  Dolores,  and  a  middle-aged 
Yucatecan  sailor  whose  name  was  Pedro  Paz.  With  a  new 
stock  of  provisions,  and  with  a  welcome  addition  of  elbow- 
room  compared  with  the  "  cabined,  cribbed  confinement  "  of  the 
tiny  "  Esperanza,"  we  made  our  start  in  the  highest  spirits.  The 
run  across  took  less  than  an  hour,  and  opposite  a  sandy  bay 
a  mile  north  of  the  ruins  we  anchored.  The  coast  for  the  most 
part  here  is  shelving  coral  rock,  and  even  small  saihng-boats 
dare  not  go  right  in  ;  landing  always  being  a  matter  of  wading. 

143 


144  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

We  could  see  the  main  ruin,  a  pyramid,  showing  above  the 
woods  some  little  way  inland,  and  as  there  are  no  paths  here- 
abouts, and  we  knew  we  should  have  to  cut  our  way,  we  were 
all  armed  with  machetes.  We  stopped  under  a  clump  of 
cocoa  palms  on  the  beach — one  of  our  sailors  shinning  up  for 
the  green  fruit — and  had  a  delightful  drink  of  the  water  ; 
and  then  tramped  down  the  rocky  shore  till  we  came  opposite 
the  ruins. 

But  we  had  no  sooner  plunged  into  the  woods  than  we 
discovered  we  had  not  got  them  to  ourselves.  They  were 
thickly  populated,  and  the  natives  were  the  most  savage  and 
inhospitable  we  had  yet  met.  The  air  was  simply  filled  with 
mosquitoes,  which  evidently  regarded  our  arrival  as  the  ac- 
casion  for  a  "  dia  de  fiesta,"  and  started  stinging  our  faces, 
hands,  and  arms  till  their  pestilent  persistence  nearly  mad- 
dened us.  If  there  is  anything  to  urge  you  to  work  in  such 
a  spot  where  the  least  movement  causes  the  sweat  to  run 
down  you  in  rivulets,  it  is  mosquitoes.  While  your  machete 
is  at  work  and  the  bush  tops  and  branches  fall  around  you, 
the  midget  fiends  keep  off  a  bit.  Thus  goaded  into  frenzied 
activity,  we  were  not  long  in  reaching  El  Meco. 

It  is  a  pyramid  faced  with  stone,  but,  unlike  that  at 
Chichen,  it  is  built  in  perpendicular  terraces,  each  smaller 
than  the  one  below,  giving  its  sides  the  appearance  of  a  gigantic 
stairway,  save  that  the  ledges  are  not  of  equal  height  or  width. 
On  the  east  side  there  had  been  a  staircase,  now  ruined.  We 
scrambled  up,  clinging  on  to  the  gnarled  roots  and  branches 
of  trees  growing  from  it,  and  once  on  the  top  a  refreshing  sea 
breeze  greeted  us,  for  the  time  driving  our  persecutors  away. 
To  make  anything  like  accurate  measurements  the  dense 
overgrowth  had  to  be  first  cut  away,  and  we  stripped  off  our 
coats  and  revolver  belts  and  set  to  with  a  will.  The  building, 
which  our  energetic  assault  on  the  vegetation  disclosed,  was 
now  roofless.  It  had  consisted  of  two  rectangular  rooms 
running  north  and  south.  At  the  top  of  the  stairs  on  the 
east,  forming  the  doorway  of  the  first  chamber,  stood  two 
pillars  i8  inches  in  diameter.  The  inner  room  had  two  stone 
platforms  about  4  feet  high,  probably  altars  :  for  there  is 
no  doubt  that  all  the  strictly  pyramidal  buildings  of  Central 
America  were  religious  in  character.  We  say  "  strictly 
pyramidal "  to  differentiate  these  temples  from  the  other 
buildings  of  Yucatan  which  are,  almost  without  exception, 
erected  on  mounds.     While  making  our  measurements  one 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     145 

^J-^  of  us,  tape  in  hand,  nearly  touched  a  snake  which  was  hiding 
in  a  crevice  in  the  wall.  He  was  quite  small,  of  a  ringed 
black  and  brown  colour,  but  Lucio  declared  him  one  of  the 
deadhest  of  all  snakes.  He  called  it  calom.  We  tickled  the 
reptile's  tail  with  a  machete,  and  he  squirmed  deeper  into 
the  wall  and  disappeared. 

A  queerer  occupant  of  this  ancient  temple  was  a  huge 
hermit  crab,  which  by  a  miracle  of  persistence  had  climbed 
the  pyramid  and  was  hidden  under  a  tree-root.  These  un- 
canny creatures  are  everywhere  on  the  islands  and  along  the 
coast  of  Yucatan.  They  live  in  large  whelk-shells,  moving 
from  one  to  another  as  their  growth  demands  a  larger  tenement. 
All  you  can  see  of  them  is  a  great  red  hairy  claw,  which  is 
used  to  close  the  entrance  of  the  shell.  When  disturbed 
they  make  a  shrill  noise  like  the  faint  chirping  of  a  bird — 
by  rubbing,  it  is  said,  the  ridged  surface  of  the  last  joint 
of  the  right  great  claw  against  the  sharp  edge  of  the  second 
joint.  The  woodlands  of  the  islands  were  full  of  them,  and  of 
course  they  were  frequent  on  the  beaches  ;  but  it  did  seem 
curious  to  find  this  big  fellow  so  much  up  in  the  world. 
His  family  removals,  necessitating  a  descent  of  the  pyramid 
and  a  journey  of  at  least  half  a  mile  through  the  bush  to  the 
beach,  where  he  would  have  a  choice  of  whelk-shells,  must 
have  been  undertakings  before  which  all  but  the  stoutest 
crab  hearts  would  have  quailed. 

Climbing  out  on  to  the  face  of  the  ruin,  we  found  its  height 
to  be  48  feet.  Descending,  we  discovered  on  the  south  side 
of  the  pyramid  on  the  ground-level  a  tiny  chamber  5  feet 
high  and  8  feet  long,  the  door  about  3  feet  high  and  2^  wide. 
Remains  of  such  a  room  existed  on  the  left.  In  other  ruins 
we  were  struck  again  and  again  with  the  smallness  of  the 
doorways  and  the  lowness  of  the  roofs.  There  are  so  many 
buildings  of  the  kind  in  Yucatan  that  a  ludicrous  belief  is 
current  among  the  natives  that  the  builders  of  the  ruins  were 
dwarfs.  There  is  of  course  nothing  in  such  a  theory.  These 
tiny  rooms  at  El  Meco  were  probably  sleeping-chambers  for 
the  guardian  priests.  In  the  woods  around  we  found  three 
other  buildings  much  ruined,  the  pillars  formed  of  rounded 
monohths  each  some  6  feet  high.  Our  investigations  had 
taken  some  time,  and  it  would  be  quite  unsafe  to  estimate 
how  many  times  we  had  been  bitten.  Some  idea  may  be 
gained  of  the  number  of  mosquitoes  "  engaged  "  by  the  fact 
that  we  counted  over  three  dozen  on  one  coat-sleeve.     We 

10 


146  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

were  right  glad  to  reach  the  shore  and  get  on  board,  though 
with  smarting  faces  and  itching  hands. 

A  run  of  an  hour  down  the  coast  brought  us  to  the  northern 
end  of  Cancun  Island.  Seaward,  owing  to  surf  and  coral,  it 
is  difficult  to  land,  but  it  is  separated  from  the  mainland 
by  a  series  of  narrow  channels  opening  into  several  broad 
bays,  almost  land-locked  sea  lakes.  At  the  entrance  are 
sandspits  running  out  from  island  and  shore,  forming  the 
narrowest  of  channels,  perhaps  six  feet  wide.  It  is  such 
difficulties  of  navigation  and  the  discomforts  of  small-boat 
life  which  have  kept  other  travellers  away  and  permitted 
us  the  privilege  of  being  the  first  to  thoroughly  explore  these 
islands.  Once  past  the  sandspits  you  enter  a  truly  tropic 
creek.  The  water  is  a  beech-leaf  green  and  clear  as  glass  ; 
the  laurel-hued  mangrove  trees  grow  far  into  the  stream, 
their  brown  snake-like  roots  showing  feet  above  the  water. 
Perched  upon  these  weird  trees  are  wildfowl  and  fishing-birds, 
while,  where  the  mud  has  silted  up  between  the  roots  and 
formed  a  ledge,  lie  alligators  blinking  their  evil-looking  eyes 
in  the  blazing  light.  Below  you  in  the  green  crystal  depths 
you  see  turtle  floating,  and  the  giant  picuda,  with  pike-like 
jaws,  chasing  the  httle  fishes. 

This  picuda,  full-grown  specimens  of  which  weigh  their 
fifteen  or  twenty  pounds,  makes  exciting  fishing.  There 
is  no  science  about  it,  for  he  is  a  regular  sea  glutton,  and 
with  a  fresh  fish  (the  picuda  insists  on  this  :  he  is  no  refuse- 
eater)  as  bait  on  a  string  quite  ropelike  in  its  thickness  you 
are  almost  certain  to  hook  one  just  about  here.  The  monster 
comes  on  board  with  a  regular  hullabaloo,  flapping  and  leaping 
like  a  veritable  tarpon  and  inflicting  ugly  bites  if  you  give  him 
the  chance.  The  sailors  kill  him  by  hitting  him  over  the  head 
with  a  wooden  mallet ;  but  this  weapon  proved  ineffective 
in  the  hands  of  the  lad  Dolores,  who,  apparently  in  the  hope 
of  hastening  the  fish's  escape  from  his  sufferings,  pressed  his 
two  brown  fingers  into  the  creature's  eye-sockets.  We  were 
ashamed  of  the  cruelty  of  the  action,  and  motioned  to  him 
to  stop.  But  Yucatecans  have  no  humanity,  and  the  boy, 
his  handsome  face  lit  up  with  a  bewitching  smile,  went  on 
gouging  out  the  fish's  eyes. 

We  had  a  shot  or  two  at  an  alligator  and  bagged  a  few 
birds  as  we  sailed  out  of  this  creek  into  a  wide  stretch  of 
water,  its  thickly  wooded  shores  making  it  look  like  an  English 
lake.    Towards   evening  we  ran  into  another  channel,  and 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     147 

there  at  an  inlet,  tree-shrouded,  we  ran  the  boat  into  the 
boggy  bank.  The  only  inhabitant  of  the  island  is  an  old 
Indian,  a  regular  Mayan  Robinson  Crusoe,  nearly  bhnd  through 
a  splinter  of  wood  flying  up  into  his  face  while  he  was  chopping. 
We  were  greeted  by  the  barking  of  some  half  a  dozen  dogs 
which  came  bounding  down  from  the  hut,  followed  by  their 
master  who  could  only  just  distinguish  night  from  day,  and  yet 
made  his  way  to  the  water  edge  with  extraordinary  confidence. 
He  welcomed  us  with  true  Mayan  hospitality,  and  in  a  little 
time  we  were  dining  hke  princes  ofE  roasted  picuda,  biscuit  and 
rice,  washed  down  with  Cadbury's  cocoa.  There  was  one  draw- 
back to  our  new  quarters  :  the  mosquitoes  were  in  possession. 
Cancun  is  a  sixteen-mile  stretch,  mostly  dense  bush  ;  at 
the  northern  end  one  of  the  artificial  mounds,  examples  of 
which  we  examined  higher  up  the  coast  by  Cape  Catoche. 
Our  old  Mayan  host  was  called  Patricio  Pat,  quite  probably 
a  descendant  of  the  cacique  Naum  Pat  with  whom,  it  will  be 
remembered,  the  Spaniards  made  such  friends  on  their  first 
visits  to  Cozumel.  He  had  two  huts  in  a  clearing  near  the 
water  edge,  surrounded  by  a  grove  of  cocoa  palms  for  the 
fruit  of  which  a  dory  came  periodically  from  the  other  islands. 
There  was  a  certain  distinction  about  the  old  man's  face  as 
he  crouched  in  front  of  the  fire  on  the  earth  floor  of  his  hut 
and  held  his  lean  brown  hands  out  to  where  he  could  half 
see  the  red  flame.  He  had  queer  stories  to  tell  of  haunted 
ruins  in  the  bush  here  ;  of  how  he  had  heard  his  name  called 
several  times,  and  cocks  crowing  and  all  the  other  noises  of 
a  village  ;  and  how,  long  ago,  a  Yucatecan  fisherman,  wantonly 
breaking  up  a  stone  that  had  fallen  from  an  Indian  palace 
front,  had  been  struck  from  behind  by  an  unseen  foe,  and 
after  hours  of  unconsciousness  had  crawled  to  the  sea  beach 
and  for  weeks  had  been  on  the  point  of  death.  It  was  all 
very  quaint,  and  the  old  man's  droning  voice  and  his  clear- 
cut,  wizened,  hairless  face  in  the  glare  of  the  fire  made  just 
such  a  figure  as  must  have  crouched  round  the  fires  when 
Naum  Pat  was  lord  hereabouts  and  the  caravels  of  Spain  had 
yet  to  be  sighted  from  the  wooded  shores.  We  early  tumbled 
into  our  hammocks,  but  long  after,  in  the  flickering  light  of 
the  fire,  Robinson  Crusoe  squatted  in  front  of  a  small  stool  on 
which  stood  an  earthenware  pot,  into  which  he  laboriously 
scraped  and  squeezed  with  a  broken  fragment  of  cocoanut 
shell  the  meat  of  a  pile  of  cocoanuts  from  which  he  was  thus 
extracting  the  oil. 


148  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

We  were  up  at  dawn  hoping  to  steal  a  march  on  the  enemy ; 
but  even  at  that  early  hour  the  insect  curses  of  the  tropics 
had  taken  down  the  shutters  and  started  business.  While 
we  breakfasted,  Crusoe  squatted  on  his  haunches  in  true  Mayan 
fashion,  meditatively  rubbing  his  thin  hands  and  giving  us 
the  best  directions  he  could  for  our  coming  hunt  in  the  bush. 
By  seven,  accompanied  by  Lucio  and  Pedro,  we  were  off. 
As  we  dived  into  the  woodlands  at  the  back  of  the  hut,  the  old 
fellow,  machete  on  shoulder,  in  sack  shift  and  patched  striped 
cotton  trousers,  surrounded  by  a  pack  of  leaping,  barking 
dogs,  started  for  the  eastern  shore,  where  he  expected  a  dory 
to  fetch  a  cargo  of  cocoanuts. 

Our  road  led  up  a  winding  path,  where  the  mosquitoes 
were  "  plentiful  and  strong  on  the  wing,"  to  the  crest  of  the 
island,  which  was  divided  into  the  eastern  side,  all  sand  and 
low  heather-like  plant,  sea-thistle  and  stunted  cactus  ;  and 
the  western,  all  jungly  woods.  For  some  miles  we  had  to 
keep  to  the  eastward.  The  sand  was  soft  and  deep,  and  the 
roots  of  the  plants  sprawling  around  gave  one  no  foothold. 
In  anticipation  of  the  difficulty  of  changing  even  small  paper 
money  in  the  island  pueblos,  we  had  filled  a  money-belt  with 
two  hundred  Mexican  dollars  (;^2o) ,  each  in  size  nearly  as  big 
as  an  English  five-shilling  piece.  This  belt  had  always,  so  far, 
been  a  bit  of  a  white  elephant  ;  to-day  it  was  a  positive  cross. 
We  realised  for  the  first  time  what  is  described  so  eloquently 
as  "  the  burden  of  wealth  "  ;  and  before  we  had  staggered 
and  floundered  our  first  mile  in  that  relentlessly  yielding 
sand  we  both,  as  our  turn  came  to  carry  it,  cursed  a  civilisa- 
tion which  had  created  the  necessity  of  bullion  and  fervently 
wished  we  had  not  a  copper  in  the  world. 

Following  Crusoe's  suggestion,  we  started  cutting  into  the 
woods  at  a  point  where  some  cocoa  palms  stood.  Though 
we  thus  lost  the  sand  we  found  the  mosquitoes  ;  and  nobody 
but  the  keenest  of  ruin-hunters  would  have  stood  the  earthly 
hell  through  which  we  passed  for  the  next  hour.  In  a  wood 
too  high  and  thick  to  admit  air,  but  too  low  to  shade  you 
from  the  scorching  sun  ;  with  every  second  bush  bearing 
thorns  an  inch  long ;  your  legs  entangled  in  bines  and  creepers 
so  stout  that  once  caught  no  struggles,  however  heroic,  would 
free  you  ;  too  hot  to  wear  your  flannel  shirt-sleeves  down, 
and  too  pestilential  with  mosquitoes  for  you  to  dare  expose 
an  inch  more  skin  than  was  necessary  ;  bathed  in  sweat, 
stumbling,   stooping,  creeping,   leaping,   over,  under,   in  and 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     149 

out ;  cutting  your  way  foot  by  foot, — you  need  the  true  ex- 
plorer's zeal  not  to  sit  down  and  give  it  up.  But  we  had  not 
come  six  thousand  miles  to  give  it  up  ;  and  after  we  had 
made  two  false  detours  we  "  struck  "  a  ruin  which  well  re- 
warded us  for  our  sufferings. 

Deep  in  the  thickest  bush,  the  trees  around  shrouding  them 
with  a  curtain  of  speckled  green,  stood  a  group  of  buildings 
upon  which  we  were  probably  the  first  white  men  to  look, 
as  there  is  no  record  of  a  Spanish  landing  in  Caiicun.  At 
such  a  moment  the  most  matter-of-fact  being  must  yield  to  a 
certain  feeling  of  solenmity.  You  are  gripped  by  the  romance 
of  the  quest  after  a  vanished  civiUsation.  But  in  Cancun  at 
least  there  are  winged  fiends  who  serve  as  a  very  practical 
reminder  that  you  cannot  afford  to  day-dream  but  must 
get  to  work  at  once.  While  our  men  lit  a  palm-leaf  fire  to 
keep  the  mosquitoes  at  bay,  we  cut  through  the  bush  to  see 
how  many  buildings  there  were  and  where  to  begin.  There 
were  four,  and  the  first  we  tackled  was  an  oblong  building, 
26  feet  by  10,  erected  on  a  platform  built  up  some  4  feet 
from  the  ground-level,  making  a  terrace  all  round  varying  in 
width  from  12  to  16  feet.  On  the  west  were  two  small  door- 
ways, and  on  the  east  three.  These  were  so  small  that  it  was 
necessary  to  crawl  through.  Digging  down,  however,  we  found 
under  a  foot  of  earth  the  true  flooring.  This  was  a  cement 
of  lime  and  sand,  and  was  two  and  a  half  inches  thick  over 
the  entire  floor.  The  interior  of  the  building  was  in  the  same 
style  as  those  of  the  mainland,  having  what  is  known  as 
the  Mayan  arch,  running  up  almost  to  a  point,  the  rough 
comers  of  the  stones  standing  out  like  steps  inverted,  a  slab 
being  laid  across  the  two  walls,  thus  making  a  narrow  ceiling. 
The  outside  walls  were  built  up  to  the  same  level  as  the  pointed 
roof,  and  the  space  between  was  filled  with  rubble,  making  a 
flat  roof  now  entirely  overgrown  with  cactus  and  trees.  Above 
the  centre  door  was  a  gap  where  the  wall  had  fallen  and  where 
once  stood  what  must  have  been  more  than  a  life-sized  figure. 
On  the  platform  below  we  found  the  head  and  shoulders,  a 
fine  piece  of  carving  :  legs,  body  and  arms  were  smashed 
almost  past  recognition,  and  the  feathered  headdress  had 
entirely  disappeared.  The  head  and  bust  was  so  heavy 
that  it  took  the  four  of  us  to  carry  it  a  few  yards  and  set  it 
against  the  pyramidal  mound  near  by  where  we  could  photo- 
graph it,  and  where  it  could  be  for  the  future  out  of  the  line 
of  fire  of  falling  stone. 


user  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

We  next  visited  the  pyramid.  It  was  approached  by 
steps,  but  the  temple  which  once  crowned  it  had  fallen  and 
was  a  mass  of  stones,  none  of  them  apparently  carved.  But 
the  most  extraordinary  ruins  were  what  had  evidently  been 
two  pillared  halls  standing  about  fifty  yards  apart.  That  on 
the  south  was  the  largest,  and  stood  on  a  stone  platform  90  feet 
long  and  33  feet  wide.  The  building  itself  measured  60  feet  by 
17  feet,  and  in  two  rows  down  the  centre,  ten  in  each  row, 
were  immense  pillars,  many  monolithic  and  some  as  much  as 
8^  feet  high.  These  had  originally  supported  the  roof,  now 
fallen  and  making  a  rooting  place  for  trees  and  undergrowth 
which  covered  the  whole  platform.  Around  the  platform 
on  the  ground-level  was  a  paved  walk,  16  feet  wide,  now 
buried  under  the  fallen  walls.  The  building  on  the  north 
was  no  better  preserved.  It  was  exactly  the  same  except 
that  it  had  three  rows  of  pillars  running  the  length  of  the 
building,  in  their  broken  state  looking  Uke  grey-barked  trees 
severed  by  an  axe.  When  newly  erected  these  twin  pillared 
halls  must  have  been  really  magnificent.  The  architecture  of 
all  the  buildings  was  rougher  but  more  solid  than  that  of  those 
of  the  mainland.  A  noticeable  feature,  which  we  remarked 
again  in  Cozumel,  was  the  prevalence  of  the  monolithic  pillar, 
which  we  found  nowhere  on  the  mainland  among  the  richly 
decorated  ruins  such  as  Chichen,  Labna  and  Sayil,  where  the 
pillar,  almost  always  carved  in  relief,  is  square  and  built  in 
sections  a  foot  or  two  high.  Of  mural  ornamentation  there 
was  no  sign  ;  and  the  general  appearance  of  these  Cancun 
ruins  showed  cruder  workmanship  than  the  rich  fagade  work 
and  carvings  of  Chichen  and  Palenque. 

On  our  way  back  to  the  shore  we  discovered  a  small  group 
of  ruins,  a  mound  and  two  or  three  houses,  in  hopeless  decay. 
The  isolated  position  of  the  island  and  its  difficulty  of  approach 
perhaps  explain  the  fact  that  no  Spanish  landing  in  the  six- 
teenth century  is  recorded.  Thus  time  and  time  alone  has  been 
the  enemy  of  this  city.  Shattered  as  they  were  by  the  ravages 
of  time,  these  Cancun  buildings  suggest — nay,  they  demand  as 
their  only  explanation — a  multitudinous  population.  The 
mere  erection  of  the  pillared  halls  by  hand  labour  must  have 
been  a  colossal  task,  and  how  the  monoliths,  many  twice 
the  height  of  the  average  Indian,  were  so  perfectly  hewn 
without  metal  tools  seems  almost  a  miracle.  Cancun  is  a 
limestone  island,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  stones 
were  quarried  somewhere    on  its  surface,  though    we   were 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS 


151 


unable  to  find  a  suggestion  of  a  quarry  anywhere  for  miles 
around. 


v> 


<^- 


C^'fO 


o 


5 


Mi 


^fai:^  .•  40  inc/ui  to  40  English  /ttl 


PLAN   OF   CANCUN   RUINS. 


At  the  extreme  southern  end  of  Cancun,  whither  we  now 
sailed,  we  discovered  another  small  ruin  of  no  great  interest, 


152  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

but  further  suggesting  the  once  dense  population  of  the  island. 
Here,  too,  was  a  fisher-hut,  four  poles  stuck  in  the  sand  with 
two  cross-poles  covered  with  palm-leaf  for  roof.  Round  this 
Cancun  point,  known  as  Nisuc,  are  turtle  in  plenty  :  both 
the  green  turtle  {Chelonia  midas),  beloved  of  aldermen,  and 
the  hawk-billed  turtle,  the  caret  [Eretmochelys  imhricata), 
which  provides  the  commercial  tortoise-shell.  It  is  this 
latter  which  the  Yucatecan  fishermen  chiefly  hunt,  for  they 
can  get  as  much  as  eight  dollars  a  pound  for  the  shell.  For 
the  flesh  of  the  turtle  they  have  no  taste  ;  an  example  of 
the  truth  of  the  saying  that  what  we  have  we  never  value. 
The  beaches  of  these  Caribbean  isles,  around  the  fisher  settle- 
ments, are  often  littered  with  the  rotting  carcases  of  turtle, 
spectacles  of  wilful  waste  sufficient  to  break  the  stoutest 
aldermanic  heart.  The  preparation  of  turtle  soup  demands 
a  culinary  artist,  and  no  Yucatecan  is  this.  Their  kitchen 
methods  are  ever  those  of  the  sloven  cook  who  throws  meat 
into  a  pot  anyhow.  But  they  begin  to  learn  that  there  are 
people  who  prize  the  flesh  of  turtle,  and  a  certain  trade  is  done 
in  the  green  reptihan  with  the  captains  of  American  trading 
schooners  which  come  across  the  Gulf  from  Florida  and  the 
Eastern  States.  Thus  a  feature  of  the  villages  are  the  turtle 
"  crawls,"  enclosures  built  some  few  yards  out  from  the  water 
edge,  made  of  stakes  driven  in  in  the  form  of  a  small  square 
bound  together  by  hanas.  Here  the  turtles  swim  about 
until  they  are  wanted.  At  the  "  crawl  "  in  Isla  de  Mujeres 
there  were  some  two  dozen,  many  of  them  monsters  weighing 
four  hundred  pounds  or  more. 

At  this  hut  on  Nisuc  Point  we  met  two  young  Yuca- 
tecan fishermen,  handsome  fellows  in  spotless  cottons,  their 
feet  sandaUed.  They,  too,  were  from  Mujeres  and  they 
joined  us  in  our  evening  meal,  which  we  ate  in  picnic  fashion 
at  the  water  edge.  But  the  mosquitoes  were  also  feeding,  so 
at  sunset  we  put  out  into  mid-stream  to  avoid  their  pressing 
attentions,  and  fished  for  picuda  till  dark.  These  Yucatecans 
are  quite  Arab-like  in  the  simpHcity  of  their  sleeping  habits, 
and  it  was  quaint  to  watch  at  sundown  the  five  men  wrap 
themselves,  head  and  all,  in  their  coloured  blankets,  as  if  they 
were  going  to  send  themselves  by  parcels  post,  and  fall  asleep 
in  little  packets  all  over  the  fore  deck.  All  night  they  sleep 
in  the  same  attitude  in  which  they  lie  down,  a  dreamless 
sleep  like  that  of  a  cat  on  a  sunny  window-ledge.  And  it 
is   a   good  thing   they   do,   for   the   few   inches   of  gunwale 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     153 

would  not  save  them  from  a  ducking  if  they  twisted  a  hand's 
breadth. 

With  the  dawn,  after  cocoa  and  biscuits,  we  sailed  down 
the  coast  once  more  towards  San  Jos6  de  Bega,  near  where  it 
was  rumoured  there  was  a  ruined  cenote  with  remarkable 
carved  figures.  San  Jos6  is  the  headquarters  of  a  Mexican 
woodcutting  company  which  has  a  paper  concession  of  the 
whole  east  coast  from  Cape  Catoche  to  Vijia.  We  say  "  paper 
concession  "  deliberately,  for  these  Mexican  trespassers  on 
the  independent  Indian  territory  live  in  a  state  of  siege, 
and  of  their  nominal  holding  of  about  4,000  square  miles 
the  administrator  of  the  Company  told  us  that  his  chicleros 
(chicle-cutters)  were  only  able  to  work  fifteen  square  miles 
just  round  the  settlement.  Thither  from  the  rickety  Uttle  pier 
we  travelled  up  by  mule-drawn  trolley  car  on  the  plantation 
railway,  the  seats  empty  sugar-boxes,  through  swamps  haunted 
by  alhgators.  As  at  La  Compaiiia  Agricola,  the  administrator 
and  the  chief  ofl&cials  were  Spanish  Cubans,  the  "  hands  " 
all  Mexicans.  A  dusty,  dirty  garbage-littered  street  of 
boarded  shanties ;  in  the  midst  the  stuccoed  administrative 
building.  At  one  end  a  pahsaded  corral  for  the  mules  ;  at 
the  other  a  desolate  square  of  clearing,  which  looked  as  if  it 
had  never  known  any  other  use  save  its  apparently  present 
one  of  a  gigantic  rubbish-shoot,  smrounded  by  wood  cabins 
built  up  a  foot  or  two  from  the  ground.  This  was  San  Jos6, 
and  here  we  were  received  with  a  courtesy  as  kindly  as  that 
we  had  exjjerienced  at  La  Compania  Agricola.  This  Mexican 
company  is  known  as  La  Compania  Colonisidora,  and  we 
shall  have  something  to  say  directly  about  its  finances  in  the 
sketch  we  are  going  to  give  of  the  war  of  extermination  in 
progress  hereabouts.  The  ofl&cials  knew  nothing  about  ruins, 
and  cared  less  ;  but  they  were  politely  tolerant  of  our  enthu- 
siasm, and  the  administrator  kindly  dispatched  a  cowboy, 
dressed  in  leather  from  head  to  foot  and  armed  with  rifle, 
revolver  and  machete,  a  bandoher  of  cartridges  slung  round 
him,  to  a  distant  part  of  the  estate  to  fetch  a  chiclero  who 
could  act  as  guide.  Meantime  we  sat  down  to  breakfast  with 
loaded  Winchester  rifles  leaning  against  the  wall  behind  us, 
and  every  man  with  a  revolver  belted  on  him.  They  take 
their  life  of  siege  very  easily  ;  the  Company  owns  a  tramp 
steamer  which  comes  round  from  Vera  Cruz  once  a  month  with 
provisions ;  and  after  the  meal  the  administrator  showed  us  a 
stone  fort  which  he  had  had  erected  in  case  of  a  general  attack. 


154  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

As  it  was  now  midday  and  no  start  could  be  made  for  the 
ruins  till  next  morning  at  dawn,  he  proposed  we  should  go 
out  peccary  shooting,  and  we  sent  down  to  the  boat  for  our 
guns.  Our  hosts  donned  the  most  wonderful  Mexican  shoot- 
ing-boots reaching  almost  to  their  waists,  decorated  with 
tassels  of  string.  They  had  some  half  a  dozen  fine  boar- 
hounds,  one  of  the  dogs,  a  redoubtable  hunter,  bearing  many 
a  scar  from  duels  with  jaguars  and  the  wild  pig,  the  male  of 
which  latter,  always  heavily  tusked,  often  accounts  for  two 
or  three  dogs  before  he  is  bagged.  It  was  a  picturesque 
afternoon  we  spent  in  the  woods.  The  five  Spaniards  were 
keen  sportsmen,  if  a  trifle  reckless  in  the  angles  at  which  they 
held  their  guns.  The  beating  through  the  dense  undergrowth 
was  something  of  a  "  foUow-my-leader,"  and  we  spent  most 
of  the  time  looking  down  their  barrels,  realistically  literal 
personifications  of  "  the  man  behind  the  gun." 

The  peccary  were  not  at  home,  but  one  of  the  party  bagged 
a  superb  specimen  of  the  hoco,  as  large  as  the  largest  gobbler 
turkey,  with  crested  head,  its  feathers  all  of  gold  and  bronze. 
While  we  were  supping  the  leather-clad  vaquero  returned  with 
the  Mexican  workman  who  was  to  act  as  guide,  and  who, 
under  severe  cross-examination,  seemed  to  sustain  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  rumoured  cenote.  So  it  was  arranged  that  at 
dawn  a  whole  party  of  us  should  make  a  day  of  it,  the  ad- 
ministrator prettily  assuming  a  positive  archaeological  zeal 
(alas  !  he  will  never  do  so  again)  and  giving  generous  orders 
for  the  preparation  of  the  picnic  baskets. 

It  is  sad  to  reflect  that  man's  pleasure  is  so  largely  de- 
pendent upon  untimely  deaths  in  the  animal  world,  and  we 
fear  that  the  arranging  for  our  archaeological  woodland  junket- 
ings of  the  morrow  was  answerable  for  a  porcine  tragedy 
which  was  enacted  while  we  took  our  coffee.  The  stone- 
floored  room  in  which  we  supped  opened  out  into  the  kitchen 
yard,  and,  in  the  friendly  way  to  which  we  had  now  become 
quite  accustomed,  chickens,  turkeys,  and  pigs  ran  through  the 
room  at  intervals  ;  one  of  the  latter  affording  the  dogs  quite 
a  boar-hunt  between  our  legs  and  those  of  the  chairs.  We 
had  dined  both  wisely  and  well,  and  were  contentedly  smoking 
the  strong  Mexican  cigarettes  when  piercing  shriek  after  shriek 
rent  the  night  air.  A  poor  pig  was  going  the  way  of  all  flesh 
at  the  hands  of  the  Mexican  cook,  not  at  a  respectful  distance 
from  our  LucuUus-like  feast  but  actually  at  the  door  with 
its  head  in  a  pail ;  and  its  piteous  cries,  ending  in  a  last  gurgle 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     155 

as  the  knife  did  its  brutal  work,  like  the  writing  on  the  wall 
of  the  banqueting  hall  of  Belshazzar,  shook  our  nerves. 

We  had  some  reason  to  think  on  the  morrow  of  poor  piggy 
"  butchered  to  make  an  archaeologists'  holiday,"  for  we  were 
destined  to  a  fiasco  as  complete,  to  a  disappointment  as 
bitter,  as  any  in  our  tour,  and  there  were  many.  While  it 
was  still  dark,  the  finest  mules  in  the  corral  were  saddled  and 
brought  round.  Mexican  cowboys,  in  all  the  glory  of  leather 
jerkins,  hung  wicker  baskets,  bursting  full  of  cold  meat 
and  fruits,  of  flasks  of  cognac  and  flagons  of  red  wine,  over 
their  saddlebows.  The  administrator's  zeal  had  not  evapo- 
rated with  the  night,  and  he  appeared,  booted  and  spurred, 
to  preside  over  the  coffee  which  was  served  to  us  just  as  the 
Ught  was  beginning  to  do  successful  battle  with  the  slate-grey 
of  the  before-dawn  sky.  It  was  a  most  imposing  cavalcade 
which  started  off  a  little  later.  All  the  shanties  emptied  their 
human  contents  among  the  rubbish  on  the  clearing  to  give 
us  a  fitting  send-off.  First,  in  true  military  fashion,  there 
were  the  Mexican  guides,  as  scouts,  on  foot  and  mounted. 
Next  came  the  administrator,  commanding-in-chief,  then 
came  the  archaeological  heroes  of  the  occasion  (not,  alas  !  long 
to  be  heroes) ;  and  then  some  eight  or  ten  sleek  mules,  in 
leather  and  braided  string  trappings,  bearing  Mexicans  and 
Cubans  eager  for  the  cenote. 

Everything  was  simshiny  at  first.  The  forest  was  ex- 
quisite in  the  early  morning  sunlight.  And  then  .  .  .  after 
a  few  miles  a  "  change  came  o'er  the  spirit  of  our  dreams." 
Long  before  the  hour  came  for  broaching  those  flagons  of  wine 
and  samphng  the  contents  of  those  ample  baskets,  "  the 
travellers  had  returned  "  to  San  Jos6,  a  very  dispirited  train 
of  men  and  mules.  The  ruins  were  the  fullest-grown,  most 
phenomenally  robust  type  of  archaeological  failure  possible. 
The  cenote  was  a  small  surface  cave  with  no  suspicion  of 
carvings  or  figures  ;  the  building  was  a  post-Conquest  erection 
of  absolutely  no  merit.  Our  humihation  was  complete.  It 
was  really  quite  a  good  thing  that  we  were  not  alone  with  that 
guide,  or  we  might  have  been  sorely  tempted  to  avenge  with 
our  revolvers  the  wrongs  of  hoodwinked  archaeology.  With 
exquisite  courtesy,  the  administrator  waded  into  the  cenote 
cave  in  his  eagerness  to  "  save  our  faces  "  and  discover  those 
obstinately  invisible  figures.  But  it  was  all  no  good.  It  was 
obvious,  as  he  turned  his  mule's  head  San  Jos6-wards,  he 
thought  us  fools.     Probably,  with  Mr.  Pickwick,  he  would 


156  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

have  gone  further  and  declared  us  impostors.  The  pig  was 
avenged  ! 

Twenty  mUes  southward  from  San  Jos6  is  the  Company's 
port,  half  a  dozen  huts  and  a  jetty  where  provisions  are  landed, 
and  such  slender  export  of  chicle,  as  it  is  possible  to  make 
from  the  limited  area  of  forest  the  Indians  permit  the  chicleros 
to  work,  is  loaded.  This  is  Puerto  Morelos,  and,  as  we  were 
now  in  the  district  where  war  is — despite  all  official  contra- 
dictions— actually  in  progress,  it  wiU  be  well  here  to  tell 
briefly  the  story  of  perhaps  the  most  iniquitous  attempt  at 
race  extermination  in  modern  times. 

The  Indians  of  the  east  coast  have  ever  been  independent. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  that.  Neither  the  old  Spanish  nor 
the  modern  Mexicans  have  ever  conquered  them  ;  and  when 
in  1872  some  Mayan  raidings  on  British  Honduras  boundaries 
brought  a  protest  from  England,  Mexico's  answer  was  equiva- 
lent to  "  These  Indians  are  independent.  Deal  with  them 
direct  as  with  a  separate  State."  Well,  England  did.  She 
made  an  agreement  with  the  chiefs  which  was  amicably 
abided  by.  For  years  past  these  Indians,  though  bitterly 
resenting  the  presence  of  any  white  man  on  their  lands,  have 
been  friendly  to  the  British  authorities,  and  have  proved 
themselves  a  peaceful,  self-supporting,  industrious  people  who 
only  asked  to  be  left  alone.  They  hate  the  Mexicans  and 
Yucatecans,  and  with  sound  reason  ;  and  troubles  occurred 
whenever  there  was  a  collision  between  the  two.  In  1893 
the  trading  of  the  Mayans  with  the  British  attracted  the  jealous 
attention  of  Mexico.  This  jealousy  took  the  form  of  a  protest 
against  the  alleged  selling  of  arms  and  ammunition  by  EngUsh 
traders  in  Orange  Walk  (second  biggest  town  in  Honduras)  to 
the  Indians.  But  though  England  promised  to  do  all  she 
could,  matters  did  not  improve  ;  and  when  Mexico  discovered 
that  the  Indians  were  turning  the  mahogany,  logwood,  and 
chicle  in  their  territory  to  profit,  she  sought  an  excuse  for 
starting  the  war  which  has  now  lasted  for  eight  years. 

The  Mexican  Government  attempted  to  stop  the  Mayans 
from  dealing  in  their  own  wood  ;  and,  when  this  failed,  they 
tried  to  levy  a  tax  on  all  lumber  and  goods  going  out  of  the 
Territory.  The  Indians  flatly  refused  to  pay,  and  when  the 
Mexicans  feebly  urged  that,  as  inhabitants  of  a  geographical 
portion  of  Mexico,  the  Mayans  should  pay  taxes  and  thus 
support  the  Federal  Army  and  Navy,  the  latter  said  in  effect, 
*'  We  don't  want  your  forces  to  protect  us.     If  our  land  is 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS      157 

threatened,  every  man  and  boy  of  us  is  ready  to  fight.  We 
aren't  doing  you  any  harm  :   we  simply  ask  to  be  left  alone." 

The  Mexicans  then  played  another  card.  They  proclaimed 
their  absolute  authority  over  Eastern  Yucatan,  and  granted 
concessions  of  the  wood-cutting  lands  to  Mexicans.  Such 
proclamation  was  in  direct  breach  of  the  Treaty  rights  of  the 
Indians,  and  in  contradiction  of  their  own  dehberate  statement 
to  the  British  Government  that  these  Indians  were  independent. 
It  was  a  Machiavellian  scheme,  and  succeeded.  The  Indians 
naturally  resented  the  companies'  trespass,  and,  after  due 
warnings,  killed  the  trespassers.  This  was  just  what  Mexico 
expected,  and  wanted.  Talking  blather  about  unprovoked 
outrages,  cannibals,  and  a  menace  of  savages  to  the  RepubUc, 
she  started  a  war  of  extermination.  From  the  first  it  was  as 
cowardly  a  war  as  it  is  now.  Troops  were  sent  before  dawn 
to  surprise  defenceless  villages.  Men,  women,  and  children 
were  butchered  as  they  slept.  In  one  case,  that  of  Chansenote, 
a  settlement  of  many  hundreds  was  so  successfully  wiped  out 
that  when  we  visited  the  district  the  inhabitants  numbered 
about  thirty.  To  the  south  of  the  Peninsula  the  same  policy 
has  been  pursued.  The  Indians  have  been  ruthlessly  massa- 
cred, whenever  a  cowardly  opportunity  offered.  The  Mexican 
troops  have  invariably  got  the  worst  of  it  in  such  open  fighting 
as  the  country  permits.'  Their  actual  invasions  of  the  Indian 
strongholds  have  always  resulted  in  their  withdrawal  without 
the  sUghtest  permanent  success.  The  Indians  are  now  con- 
centrated at  Tuloom,  on  the  mainland  opposite  the  island  of 
Coziunel.  Three  times  the  Mexicans  have  taken  this  place, 
and  three  times  have  been  obUged  to  evacuate  it. 

The  position  is  a  curious  one.  Scarcely  any  one  probably 
in  Mexico,  even  including  the  members  of  the  Cabinet,  knows 
the  truth  except  President  Diaz.  The  general  who  has  had 
the  conduct  of  the  war  throughout  is  an  octogenarian,  Ignacio 
Bravo,  a  ruthless,  bloodthirsty  old  soldier  who  rejoices  in  the 
Gilbertian  title  of  "  Inspector-General  of  Primary  Instruction." 
He  is  an  old  comrade-in-arms  of  Diaz,  and  he  has  probably 
his  orders,  though  it  is  said  that  the  President  is  most  anxious 

1  A  Central  News  telegram  recently  published  in  the  London  papers 
read  as  follows  :  "A  surprise  attack  by  a  band  of  Maya  Indians  was 
made  on  Mexican  troops  encamped  in  their  district.  A  sharp  fight 
ensued,  and  as  the  Indians  were  superior  in  numbers,  great  difl&culty 
was  experienced  in  driving  them  oflF.  A  Mexican  lieutenant  and  eight 
men  were  killed." 


158  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

not  to  have  the  Indians  killed.  If  you  ask  officials,  they  tell 
you  the  war  is  long  ago  over  ;  and  when  you  ask  them  how 
they  know,  they  say,  "  Why,  Bravo  says  so  !  "  It  is  very  much 
indeed  to  Bravo 's  interest  to  say  so.  He  has  made  the  Terri- 
tory of  Quintana  Roo,  as  Eastern  Yucatan  has  been  called 
since  the  war  started,  his  pocket  property.  He  has  amassed 
there  since  he  took  over  the  command  a  fortune  of  many 
millions  of  dollars,  and  his  methods  can  be  guessed  at  from 
his  own  cynical  confession  that  he  is  "  the  sleeping  partner  of 
every  merchant  in  the  Territory."  For  him  everything  is 
subordinated  to  £  s.  d.  A  slight  but  very  significant  instance 
of  this  was  his  reception  of  a  proposal  by  an  archaeologist  that 
he  should  give  his  permission  for  the  blowing  up  of  old  ruined 
Spanish  churches  in  the  Rio  Hondu  district.  The  request  was 
dictated  by  the  hope  that  in  the  foundations  might  be  found, 
buried  by  the  Franciscans,  some  ancient  writings  of  the  Mayans 
which  would  assist  in  the  deciphering  of  the  hieroglyphics. 
The  General  gave  the  characteristic  answer  that  he  would 
permit  the  demolition  of  the  churches  on  the  understanding 
that  the  "finds  "  were  sold  and  he  got  half. 

Utterly  unscrupulous,  venal  and  self-seeking,  the  last 
thing  Ignacio  Bravo  desires  is  any  direct  fighting  which 
might  lead  to  imfortunate  defeats  and  eye-openers  for  the 
Mexican  people.  Under  his  able  management  the  war  has 
been  whittled  down  to  the  occasional  hanging  of  an  Indian 
driven  by  starvation  to  surrender,  or  the  "  potting  "  of  them 
in  the  bush.  From  Cape  Catoche  to  Tuloom,  he  has  no  more 
authority  than  the  man  in  the  moon.  We  can  give  a  good 
proof  of  this.  While  we  were  there  he  received  a  warning  from 
the  Indians  that  on  the  i6th  of  January  they  would  attack  and 
burn  the  chicle  woods  around  Puerto  Morelos.  What  did  Bravo 
do  ?  He  feebly  sends  up  a  message  to  Puerto  Morelos  saying 
"  The  Indians  will  probably  attack  you  on  the  i6th."  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  Indians  came  that  night,  fired  the  woods, 
and  we  ourselves  saw  them  burning  for  two  nights.  No  ! 
Bravo  has  given  it  up.  He  shirks  all  open  fighting,  and  in 
his  lifetime  at  least  the  subjection  of  the  Indians  will  never 
be  an  accomplished  fact.  He  skunks  at  Bacalar  or  Santa 
Cruz  in  the  south,  or,  surrounded  by  a  battalion  of  troops, 
gallops  from  Bacalar  to  Peto  and  travels  thence  by  rail  to 
Merida. 

To  this  method  of  campaigning  is  due  the  disastrous  state 
of  the  Territory,  through  a  part  of  which  we  passed.    The 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     159 

Mexican  Government,  presumably  for  economy's  sake,  sends 
the  criminals  from  the  Mexican  gaols  to  fight  the  Indians. 
While  we  were  in  the  islands  a  shipload  of  eighty  of  the  worst 
specimens  of  half-bred  Spanish  gaol-birds  passed  on  their 
way  in  a  Government  transport  to  Bravo's  headquarters. 
Many  of  these  men  desert,  and  the  forests  around  are  infested 
thus  with  fellows  who  will  murder  you  for  a  dollar.  With 
these  Mexican  cut-throats  come  gangs  of  women,  the  most 
degraded  and  miserable  manufactures  of  Mexican  debauchery. 
The  conditions  of  life  in  the  barracks  at  Santa  Cruz  and  Ascen- 
sion Bay  are  such  as  literally  defy  description.  The  barracks 
are  mere  filthy  sheds  ;  the  half-starved  soldiers,  their  toes 
rotting  off  from  jigger  fleas,  their  skins  foul  with  disease  and 
vermin,  and  their  miserable  women  companions,  some  dying 
of  malaria  or  venereal  disease,  some  far  advanced  in  pregnancy, 
some  mere  girls  not  far  in  their  'teens,  sleeping  on  sloping 
boarded  benches  all  huddled  together.  There  are  no  attempts 
at  sanitary  arrangements,  and  the  details  of  the  lives  of  these 
wretched  men  and  women  are  really  imfit  for  publication. 
Such  men  are  not  worthy  of  the  name  of  troops  ;  but  they 
serve  the  Mexican  purpose  of  hired  slaughtermen  in  the  Indian 
shambles  which  Mexico  has  created  in  Yucatan. 

Starvation  and  starvation  alone  will  bring  about  the 
absolute  subjection  of  the  Indians  of  the  east  coast.  The 
Federal  Government  has  been  lavish  with  its  concessions  ;  but 
they  are  not  worth  the  printer's  ink  expended  on  their  gazetting 
in  the  official  newspapers  of  Mexico  City.  One  land  company 
has  smashed,  and  La  Compania  Colonisidora  is  living  simply 
on  credit.  So  large  a  sum  as  400,000  dollars  has,  it  is  said, 
been  advanced  by  the  National  Bank  of  Mexico  to  keep  it 
going.  The  deduction  from  this  is  ob\'ious.  The  Govern- 
ment, having  made  worthless  concessions,  must  take  steps 
to  hoodwink  the  shareholders  by  squandering  the  revenues. 
As  we  have  said,  we  have  it  on  the  authority  of  the  officials 
on  the  spot  that  out  of  the  4,000  square  miles  of  their  con- 
cession, they  were  at  the  time  of  our  visit  working  but  15  square 
miles,  and  there  was  little  hope  of  materially  increasing  this 
profitable  area.  The  "  war  "  is  now  as  far  as  possible  re- 
stricted to  the  occasional  "  potting  "  of  an  Indian  and  the 
burning  of  his  milpas  or  maize-fields.  In  the  extreme  north- 
east, as  we  have  stated  in  Chapter  VII.,  the  Indians  have  for 
the  time  being  asserted  their  independence  and  are  left  in 
peace.     The  Mexican  Government  have  no  effective  control  of 


i6o  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Eastern  Yucatan,  and  they  can  never  have  save  by  a  policy 
of  merciless  extermination  unworthy  of  a  Government  which 
calls  itself  civilised.  _>  j 

And  while  this  ruthless  extermination  of  a  noble  race  is 
being  enacted  in  the  extreme  east  of  the  Mexican  territories. 
General  Diaz's  Government  is  disgracing  itself  by  its  cruel 
treatment  of  the  Yaquis,  a  tribe  of  brave  Indians  in  the 
State  of  Sonora.  As  lending  complete  corroboration  to  the 
story  of  horrors  we  have  related,  we  think  it  worth  while  to 
quote  the  long  and  admirable  account  of  this  infamous  cam- 
paign from  a  recent  issue  of  a  United  States  newspaper. 
It  runs  : 

"  Americans  in  Mexico  have  made  a  formal  protest  to 
President  Diaz  against  the  wholesale  massacre  of  Yaqui  Indians. 
They  back  this  protest  with  affidavits  asserting  that  ship- 
loads of  the  unfortunate  Indians,  men,  women  and  children, 
who  are  supposed  to  be  deported  are  actually  dumped  into  the 
sea  as  a  means  of  riddance.  In  the  present  age  of  much-vaunted 
civihsation  this  seems  incredible,  but  there  is  corroboration. 
Senor  Rapael  de  Zayas  Enrigues,  a  well-informed  resident  of 
Mexico,  tells  a  story  that  bears  the  stamp  of  straightforward 
truth,  and  it  is  weU  worth  perusal.  It  is  evident  he  has  deep 
feehngs  on  this  subject,  for  he  exclaims  :  '  Poor  Yaquis  !  poor 
race  of  heroes  !  ' 

"  On  the  far  north-west  of  the  Mexican  Republic  is  the  State 
of  Sonora  ;  in  the  extreme  south-east  is  the  peninsula  of  Yuca- 
tan. There  still  exist  in  Yucatan  the  diminishing  remnants 
of  the  most  civilised  nation  of  the  pre-Columbian  epoch  of  our 
continent.  They  are  the  Mayans,  who  for  more  than  half  a 
century  have  been  forced  to  take  up  arms  to  defend  themselves 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  whites.  In  Sonora,  in  the  small  region 
lying  between  the  Ihayo  and  Yaqui  rivers,  exists  another  race 
of  Indians,  the  Yaquis,  who  have  not  builded  magnificent 
monuments  as  have  the  Mayas,  but  who  are  intelligent,  indus- 
trious, faithful,  vigorous,  and  courageous. 

"  The  Yaquis  had  always  lived  peacefully  and  submitted 
to  the  Mexican  authorities,  but  without  fusing  with  the  whites. 
They  conserved  all  their  racial  characteristics  under  the  direct 
leadership  of  their  own  caciques.  Both  races,  the  Mayans  and 
the  Yaquis,  are  distinguished  by  their  insuperable  love  for 
the  small  region  they  call  fatherland,  which  has  been  from 
very  ancient  times  their  own,  which  they  have  defended  against 
the  invasion  of  other  tribes  and  against  the  whites,  to  whom 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     i6i 

at  last  they  submitted,  retaining,  however,  always  possession 
of  the  land.  The  Yaquis  are  a  strong,  useful,  and  industrious 
race.  They  furnish  nearly  all  the  '  peones  '  or  land  workers 
to  the  farmers  of  Sonora  and  Sinaloa.  After  the  harvest 
these  peones  returned  to  their  land  and  devoted  the  rest  of 
the  year  to  the  cultivation  of  their  own  soil. 

"  The  Yaqui  region  is  favourably  situated,  well  irrigated, 
and  the  soil  is  extremely  fruitful.  The  white  men  coveted 
the  region  and  tried  to  despoil  the  Yaquis  of  what  they  had 
owned  for  centuries.  The  red  men  naturally  became  angry, 
enraged,  and  finally  they  rose,  not  in  rebellion,  but  to  defend 
and  safeguard  their  homes,  property,  and  famihes.  Thus  the 
origin  of  the  Yaquis'  struggle — a  real  struggle  for  Ufe — was  a 
despoliation  perpetrated  by  the  white  people. 

"  A  few  years  ago  President  Diaz  wanted  to  put  an  end 
to  the  long  warfare,  and  he  accomplished  his  purpose.  A  pact 
was  signed  with  the  Yaqui  chiefs  by  which  their  properties 
were  returned  to  them,  with  the  guarantee  that  they  should 
never  more  be  molested  or  deported.  Peace  was  re-estabUshed ; 
but  it  was  of  short  duration,  being  more  a  truce  than  a  per- 
manent peace,  and  it  was  so  not  because  the  Yaquis  did  not 
fulfil  their  obhgations,  but  because  the  white  men  wanted  to 
work  their  nefarious  schemes  again.  With  this  end  in  view, 
they  dexterously  got  rid  of  the  chief  Indian  leaders  and  took 
every  necessary  measure  to  destroy  the  whole  Yaqui  race  at 
the  first  sign  of  trouble.  The  Indians  scented  the  plot  a  httle 
late,  but  still  in  time  to  avoid  being  exterminated.  They  took 
the  field  again,  forced  to  do  so  by  the  treachery  of  the  whites. 

"  The  above  is  an  epitome  of  the  history  of  the  Yaqui  war, 
and  it  will  be  seen  that  justice  and  right  are  on  the  side  of  the 
Indians.  The  world  does  not  know  how  the  merciless  war  is 
carried  on  ;  but  to  give  an  idea  of  the  ways  and  means  used  it 
will  be  enough  to  say  that  all  the  barbarous  methods  of  the 
Spanish  Captain-General  Weyler  during  the  last  Cuban  insur- 
rection are  civihsed  compared  to  what  is  being  done  to  the 
Yaquis.  There  is  no  cruelty,  torture,  infamy,  to  which  they 
are  not  subjected.  Prisoners  are  condenmed  to  a  fearful 
martyrdom,  and  they  suffer  it  with  the  sublime  stoicism 
characteristic  of  their  race. 

"  Men,  women,  and  children  are  sacrificed  with  the  same 
cruelty.  To  prevent  non-combatants  from  becoming  hostiles, 
the  Mexicans  seize  them  and  transport  them  from  their  fertile 
soil   and   benign  climate  to  the  death-breeding  climate  of 

II 


l6a  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Yucatan,  where  they  are  deUvered  as  slaves  to  the  landlords, 
who  buy  them  at  so  much  a  head.  The  men  who  commit  this 
crime  make  the  public  believe  that  they  are  performing  an 
act  of  mercy,  that  these  non-combatants  are  prisoners  of  war 
whom  they  forgive  and  send  to  work  as  free  men,  intending 
to  civilise  and  protect  them. 

"  These  wretched  beings,  far  away  from  wife  and  children, 
from  their  soil  and  sky,  in  slavery,  ignorant  of  the  language 
of  their  masters  who  speak  Spanish,  and  the  language  of  the 
natives  themselves  who  speak  Maya,  become  homesick  and 
die  or  run  away,  forgetting  in  their  longing  for  freedom  the 
immense  distance  of  thousands  of  miles  that  separate  Yucatan 
from  Sonora.  Homeward  they  flee,  to  perish  in  the  lonesome 
woods  from  hunger,  thirst  or  fevers,  or  to  be  devoured  by  the 
wild  beasts  that  swarm  in  those  regions. 

"  History  does  not  register  anything  superior  to  the  heroism 
of  this  race.  Not  even  in  the  glorious  times  of  Sparta  were 
enacted  scenes  of  intrepidity  or  deeds  of  self-sacrifice  that 
surpass  those  of  the  Yaquis.  One  of  the  chiefs  of  the  tribe 
was  once  pursued  by  a  detachment  of  Rurales,  a  special  body 
of  cavalry  very  similar  to  our  Rough  Riders.  The  Indian 
chief  was  an  excellent  sharpshooter,  as  all  the  Yaquis  are.  He 
fired  from  behind  a  rock,  killing  one  of  his  enemies  with  each 
shot.  In  the  end  he  was  surrounded  by  the  Rurales.  Then 
when  a  mounted  officer  of  the  detachment  rushed  at  him, 
sabre  in  hand,  he  parried  the  thrust,  jumped  upon  the  back  of 
the  horse,  pinioned  the  arms  of  his  adversary  and  spurred 
with  his  heels  the  flanks  of  the  horse,  making  it  gallop  at  full 
speed  towards  a  precipice  near  by.  When  the  horse  reached 
the  edge  of  the  abyss,  it  stopped  suddenly,  but  the  Indian 
plunged  his  knife  into  the  animal's  haunch.  Neighing  with 
pain,  the  animal  cast  itself  headlong  over  the  precipice,  carry- 
ing with  it  the  two  men.  Two  cries  were  heard,  one  of  terror 
shrieked  by  the  Rurale,  another  of  triumph  emitted  by  the 
Yaqui. 

"  For  what  are  these  patriots  fighting  ?  To  retain  their 
small  fatherland  within  the  great  fatherland :  to  live  on  the 
soil  where  they  were  born  and  where  their  ancestors  are  buried  : 
to  have  the  right  of  hving  in  peace.  They  have  not  denied 
the  rights  of  the  Government  :  they  have  not  rebelled  against 
the  local  authorities.  The  Government  has  denied  their 
rights  :   the  local  authorities  have  persecuted  them. 

"  At  present  they  are  living  in  the  mountains,  constantly 


EL  MECO  TO  PUERTO  MORELOS     163 

fighting.  They  are  outcasts,  pariahs,  less  than  pariahs.  They 
are  treated  as  wild  beasts  ;  tracked  and  killed,  hanged  on  the 
trees  to  be  the  food  of  the  carnivorous  birds  and  a  warning 
to  their  fellows.  Really,  these  corpses  hanged  on  the  trees 
are  the  shame  of  a  society  that  boasts  of  being  civihsed. 

"  Poor  Yaquis  !  poor  race  of  heroes  !  destroyed  by  the 
infainous  and  unpatriotic  ambition  of  a  group  at  whose  service 
is  a  nation  of  braves  indifferent  to  what  they  are  doing  with 
their  brothers  of  Sonora." 

We  hold  no  brief  for  the  independent  Indians,  whether 
they  be  Yaquis  or  Mayans.  They  have  many  bad  traits. 
The  Mayans  certainly  are  cruel,  and  they  have  become  crafty 
and  treacherous  by  long  centuries  of  brutality  and  persecution. 
They  have  been  guilty,  too,  of  bloody  reprisals  ;  but  mark 
that  word  !  The  story  of  the  Spanish  domination  of  the 
whole  of  Yucatan  is  a  story  of  bloodshed,  of  basest  cruelty, 
of  the  most  hideous  lust.  In  the  name  of  Christ,  the  white 
race  has  ground  down  the  rightful  owners  of  the  soil ;  evicted 
them,  robbed  them,  murdered  them,  beaten  them,  defiled 
their  women  and  even  their  children.  Are  not  reprisals,  then, 
fair  ?  In  a  later  chapter  we  raise  the  comer  of  the  curtain 
on  as  black  a  story  of  slavery  as  the  world  has  ever  known, 
the  blacker  because  of  its  cowardice  and  hypocrisy — the 
slavery  of  so-called  civilised  Yucatan.  For  that  great  cancer 
"  Surgeon  "  Diaz  is  said  to  be  sharpening  his  operating  knife. 
And  in  this  far-eastern  portion  of  Yucatan,  because  might  is 
right,  the  last  pure  descendants  of  those  who  had  attained 
a  great  and  (if  Spanish  historians  are  to  be  trusted)  a  noble 
civilisation  are  to  be  brutally  crushed  out.  If  Mexico  values 
a  fair  name,  if  she  wishes  to  be  reckoned  a  civilised  Power, 
she  wiU  yet  turn  back.  She  will  refuse  to  write  the  last 
chapters  of  that  story  of  blood  of  which  the  Spanish  wrote 
the  first  four  centuries  ago. 


CHAPTER    X 

IN   SEARCH   OF  THE   MAYAN   MECCA 

THE  island  of  Cozumel  lies  twelve  miles  from  the  eastern- 
most shore  of  Yucatan  in  the  Caribbean  Sea  between 
20°  and  21°  north  lat.  and  86°  and  87°  west  long.  Its  name 
in  Mayan  means  "  Isle  of  Swallows,"  in  allusion,  tradition 
relates,  to  a  Mayan  deity  Tel  Cuzaan  (the  swallow-legged) 
who  was  here  chiefly  worshipped.  But  the  history  of  the 
island  contradicts  this  tradition,  for  Tel  Cuzaan  appears  to 
have  been  quite  a  minor  god  in  the  Mayan  Olympus  ;  while 
a  religious  importance,  exceeding  that  of  any  other  spot  in 
the  Mayan  countries  of  Central  America,  seems  to  have  at- 
tached to  this  island. 

According  to  the  earliest  Spanish  chroniclers  of  the  Conquest 
it  was  Isla  Sagrada,  the  Sacred  Isle  of  the  Mayan  race.  To 
it  four  centuries  back  the  tribes  from  the  mainland  of  Yucatan, 
from  Tabasco  and  Chiapas,  from  Guatemala  and  what  is  to- 
day British  Honduras,  made  yearly  pilgrimage.  In  its  centre 
rose — say  the  Spanish  annalists  of  the  sixteenth  century — 
a  grand  temple,  the  Mecca  of  the  Mayan  race.  Towards 
Cozumel  we  had  always  eagerly  looked  because  of  this  un- 
doubted ancient  sanctity,  and  because  we  hoped  that  deep 
in  her  impenetrable  forests,  this  Holy  of  Holies  might  still 
exist.  Cortes,  in  1519  (Bemal  Dias  is  the  chronicler),  de- 
stroyed a  towered  temple,  and  threw  down  the  idols  ;  but 
it  is  more  than  likely  that  this  was  not  Mecca,  for  the  Spanish 
account  does  not  admit  of  doubt  that  the  shrines  so  destroyed 
stood  upon  the  beach,  and  there  is  some  evidence  for  our  belief 
that  the  Mayan  Mecca  was  in  the  heart  of  the  island.  More- 
over our  hopes  of  a  "  find  "  were  strengthened  by  the  know- 
ledge that  the  Spaniards  never  thoroughly  explored  the 
island  ;  that  to  this  day  it  has  never  been  explored.  Four 
centuries  back  it  was  practically  what  it  is  now — one  vast 

164 


IN    SEARCH   OF   THE    MAYAN   MECCA         165 

dense  virgin  forest,  through  the  gloomy  tangle  of  which  even 
Indians  could  scarce  find  their  way. 

On  our  return  to  Isla  de  Mujeres  from  our  explorations  of 
Cancun  and  the  adjoining  coast,  misfortune  overtook  one  of 
us  in  the  shape  of  a  sharp  attack  of  malaria,  doubtless  con- 
tracted as  a  result  of  our  combats  with  mosquitoes  in  Cancun. 
Mujeres  was  about  the  most  unfortunate  place  in  the  world 
for  such  an  illness,  as  it  was  absolutely  barren  of  all  fruits  or 
fresh  food,  and  our  dietary  consisted  of  tea,  biscuits,  and  rice. 
But  we  had  to  make  the  best  of  a  week  or  more's  delay,  till 
the  fever  abated,  when,  giving  up  all  idea  of  covering  the  fifty- 
four  miles  of  open  sea,  which  lay  between  us  and  Cozumel,  in  the 
small  open  boat  we  had  so  far  used,  we  hired  a  25-ton  schooner 
for  the  voyage.  The  hold  of  this  vessel  was  fitted  up  with  a 
bed  for  the  invalid,  and  early  one  morning  we  made  a  start. 

The  communication  between  these  islands  of  the  Caribbean 
Sea  is  very  erratic.  A  regular  postal  system  does  not  exist, 
and  any  passing  boat  is  pressed  into  the  service  of  the  Post 
Office  and  made  to  carry  any  letters  or  papers  which  may 
be  waiting  delivery.  On  our  voyage  from  Holboch  we  had 
been  raised  to  the  dignity  of  mail-carriers  ;  and  now  we  learnt 
that  our  little  schooner  was  to  be  coolly  used  as  a  general 
passenger  boat.  For  when  we  got  on  board  we  found  in 
addition  to  our  crew  that  the  Jefe  had  calmly  saddled  us 
with  four  passengers  in  addition  to  the  mails.  But  if  he  had 
tried  to  make  an  excursion  steamer  of  us,  we  really  should 
not  have  objected,  for  it  was  such  an  intense  relief  to  see  the 
last  of  Mujeres.  Our  enforced  sojourn  there  had  been  a  real 
martyrdom.  Napoleon  at  Elba  was  really  not  in  it  with  us. 
Perched  up  on  our  rocky-terraced  hut  with  a  westward  view 
of  the  coast  around  El  Meco,  we  had  been  hterally  Uke  rats 
in  a  trap  ;  no  books,  no  papers,  nothing  to  see,  nowhere  to 
go  ;  sand  and  fan-palms,  rocks  and  more  sand.  The  Israelites 
never  longed  for  the  Promised  Land,  for  the  Canaan  of  milk 
and  honey  fame,  as  we  had  for  Cozumel  and  our  escape  from 
the  Isle  of  Women.  Thus  when  we  found  that  only  four 
Yucatecans  were  to  be  made  happy  by  getting  something  for 
nothing  (the  Ultima  Thule  of  all  the  devout  of  their  race), 
viz.  :  a  passage  at  our  expense — our  only  feeling  was  really 
one  of  wonder  at  the  Jefe's  moderation. 

With  a  fair  wind  Cozmnel  can  be  reached  in  twelve  hours 
from  Mujeres ;  but  the  trade  winds  hereabouts  seem  to  drop 
as  the  sun  gets  high,  and  midday  saw  us  lying  idly  by,  our 


i66  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

sails  flapping  gently  as  the  boom  swung  backwards  and 
forwards  in  time  with  the  rocking  of  the  vessel  on  the  long, 
slow  underswell  which  was  scarcely  noticeable  on  the  almost 
oily-still  surface  of  the  water.  The  blistering  heat  was  so 
intense  that  it  seemed  to  draw  from  the  water  a  mist -like 
steaming  vapour.     For  hours  we  lay 

"  As  idle  as  a  painted  ship 
Upon  a  painted  ocean." 

But  with  the  afternoon,  sure  enough,  there  came  a  gentle 
gusty  breeze,  rising  from  nowhere.  The  brown  sails  for  a 
moment  belly  out  like  well-filled  corn-sacks.  The  boom 
swings  over  with  a  creaking,  jerky,  grating  noise.  The  dark, 
clear,  oily  blue  water  breaks  up  into  little  gentle  ripples  at  our 
bow,  and  we  are  once  more  moving.  As  darkness  falls  and 
the  clear  azure  of  the  sea  turns  to  a  leaden  grey,  we  run  past 
Cancun,  this  time  to  seaward,  at  five  or  six  knots.  But  it 
is  dawn  before  we  see  the  coast  of  Cozumel,  which  is  what 
sailors  call  "  raw "  and  is  not  one  to  be  approached  at 
night  time  if  it  can  be  avoided.  So  we  stand  off  until  the 
morning  ;  for  if  one  cannot  describe  the  island's  shore  as 
one  "  whose  foot  spurns  back  the  ocean's  roaring  tide,"  it  is 
true  enough  that  that  "  foot  "  is  fearsomely  shod  with  coral. 
As  you  make  your  way  into  the  little  natural  bay  and  peer 
down  through  fathoms  of  water  clear  as  crystal,  you  see 
those  ghastly  spikes,  those  evil-looking  spires  and  towers, 
rising  from  the  bottom,  their  blackness  in  the  clear  water 
suggestive  of  their  murderous  meaning  for  mariners.  As 
we  anchor  some  five  hundred  yards  from  the  shore  the 
little  island  town  of  San  Miguel  rings  the  bay.  A  few  palm- 
thatched  huts,  a  wooden  store,  an  open  space,  a  custom  house 
with  a  flagstaff,  a  few  small  boat-shelters  of  palm-leaves  to 
save  boats  from  cracking  in  the  sun,  and  a  jetty,  three  feet 
wide,  running  out  into  water  waist-deep.  Northward  a 
grove  of  palm  trees  ;  southward  stretches,  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  see,  the  rocky  coral  beach. 

At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  Cozumel,  desolate, 
uninhabited,  was  the  headquarters  of  the  pirate  Molas,  terror 
of  the  Carib  Sea ;  and  its  rock-  and  reef-bound  coast,  broken 
here  and  there  by  tiny  land-locked  inlets,  the  water  at  the 
entrances  discoloured  by  the  sunken  corals,  looked  the  ideal 
shelter  for  a  pirate  horde.  We  were  not  long  in  starting  for 
the  rocky  bay  of  San  Miguel  in  the  crazy  dugout  which  served 


IN    SEARCH    OF   THE   MAYAN   MECCA         167 

as  longboat  for  our  schooner.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  lay  between 
us  and  the  shore  ;  and  it  looked  certain  we  should  be  swamped, 
for,  with  two  Indians,  our  packing-cases  and  guns  made  a  top- 
heavy  cargo.  But  these  islanders  are  bom  sailors,  and  the 
way  they  manoeuvred  us  over  the  swell  towards  the  small 
landing-stage  was  extraordinary.  As  we  neared  the  beach 
the  swell  broke  up  into  rollers,  and  once  or  twice  it  was  nearly 
all  up  with  us.  A  shark,  grasping  the  situation,  swam  in 
after  us,  showing  his  ugly  eyes  above  the  green  water ;  but 
he  lost  his  breakfast. 

Cozumel  is  a  veritable  Garden  of  the  Hesperides — an 
Eden  without  the  serpent,  for  curiously  enough  the  snakes, 
so  plentiful  on  the  mainland  and  on  the  other  islands,  have 
died  off  here.  It  has  a  beauty  quite  of  its  own ;  not  the 
bewilderingly  sweet,  exotic  charm,  the  impatient  luxuriance, 
of  the  damp-hot  Antilles.  Rather  are  you  impressed  with 
the  serenity  of  Nature,  her  queenly  quietude.  A  great  peace 
lies  on  the  forest,  and  on  the  sunkissed  paths  which  girdle 
the  island's  coastline.  Sixty  years  back,  when  the  American 
traveller  Stephens  landed,  the  island  was  uninhabited.  Now 
there  are  but  two  villages,  San  Miguel  and,  ten  miles  south- 
ward. El  Cedral ;  and  only  around  these  and  along  the  western 
coast  is  the  land  cultivated.  There  gardens  and  ranches  are 
rich  with  oranges  and  limes,  pineapples  and  sugar-cane, 
bananas  and  banana-apples,  grape-fruit  and  the  delicious 
soapy-fleshed  guanabana,  with  groves  of  cocoanut  palms, 
with  figs,  with  the  white  starry  flowers  of  tobacco,  with 
the  fluffy  bursting  pods  of  cotton,  and  van-coloured  spice- 
bushes.  .If  Cozumel  could  be  cleared  in  all  her  fifty  miles 
length  and  fifteen  breadth,  what  a  garden  of  the  gods  she 
would  become  ! 

To  bargain  well  one  must  be  a  good  actor.  We  were  eager 
to  unearth  some  of  the  treasures  of  the  island,  and  eager  to 
find  some  one  whose  services  as  guide  in  our  search  would  be 
worth  hiring.  Avarice  is  the  besetting  sin  of  all  Yucatecans, 
and  we  knew  that  if  we  were  to  get  any  native  help  at  any- 
thing like  reasonable  rates  we  must  pretend  an  indifference 
which  we  did  not  feel.  The  Yucatecans  do  not  understand 
archaeology  ;  they  think  it  a  cloak  for  less  innocent  treasure- 
hunting.  Molas  was  not  the  only  pirate  in  the  eighteenth 
century  who  resorted  to  Cozumel,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that 
many  a  goodly  pile  of  doubloons,  of  silver  ingots,  and  per- 
chance bags  of  Brazilian  diamonds,  are  buried  on  its  shores. 


i68  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Some  tew  years  back  a  band  of  enterprising  Americans  did 
actually  unearth  such  a  treasure,  enclosed  in  an  iron-bound 
box,  and  buried  in  the  woods  surrounding  an  ideally  piratical 
cove  half-way  between  San  Miguel  and  El  Cedral.  Thus 
suspicion  attached  to  us  at  once,  and  nothing  we  could  say 
would  persuade  the  islanders  that  a  couple  of  apparently  sane 
men  would  take  the  trouble  to  hire  schooners  and  make 
long  journeys  for  the  sole  purpose  of  measuring  old  stone 
walls  and  digging  up  beads  and  broken  potsherds.  We  met 
this  mistrust  by  hiring  a  hut  and  settling  down  to  quiet  house- 
keeping and  a  survey  of  the  island's  coast,  confident  that  we 
should  hear  something  sooner  or  later  as  to  the  existence  of 
the  traditional  temple  we  were  seeking. 

We  did  not  have  to  wait  long.  The  Yucatecan  will  do 
anything  for  money,  and  the  report  that  we  were  ruin-hunters 
soon  brought  to  our  hut  Yucatecans  "  on  the  make."  There 
were  not  many  whose  tales  were  worth  hearing.  Nobody 
knew  anything  definite  ;  perhaps  half  a  dozen  of  the  inhabit- 
ants had  crossed  to  the  eastern  coast.  Finally  we  did  unearth 
an  old  ranchero  who  was  said  to  have  declared  that,  when  a 
lad  out  hunting  in  the  forest,  he  and  his  brother  had  come 
across  a  temple  on  a  pyramid  approached  by  steps,  and 
decorated  with  blue  and  red  wall  paintings.  We  expected 
the  holiest  of  Mayan  shrines  to  be  thus  simple,  and  unadorned 
with  carvings  or  figures.  Was  this  Mecca  ?  It  was  fortunate 
for  us  that  the  old  fellow  was  away  on  his  ranchito  near  El 
Cedral,  for  in  our  first  excitement  at  getting  what  looked  like 
a  corroboration  of  our  belief  that  the  Mayan  Mecca  actually 
still  exists,  we  might  have  shown  such  eagerness  as  would  have 
sent  up  his  price  to  a  truly  tropical  figure.  As  it  was  we 
greeted  the  informant  with  a  carefully  simulated  indifference, 
and  promised  that  when  we  were  over  at  El  Cedral  we  would 
look  Don  Luis  up  and  hear  the  story  from  his  own  lips. 
Meanwhile  we  had  ample  work  before  us  in  first  examining 
the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  San  Miguel  and  then  making 
a  tour  of  the  island  coastline. 

Of  the  buildings  which  were  found  around  San  Miguel 
by  the  Spaniards  under  Grijalva  in  1518,  not  one  stone  remains 
on  another.  The  itinerary  kept  by  Grijalva  runs  :  "  On  the 
4th  of  March  we  saw  upon  a  promontory  a  white  house.  ...  It 
was  in  the  form  of  a  small  tower,  and  appeared  to  be  eight 
palms  in  length  and  the  height  of  a  man.  The  fleet  came  to 
anchor  about  six  miles  from  the  coast.  .  .  .  The  next  morning 


IN    SEARCH    OF    THE    MAYAN    MECCA  169 

we  set  sail  to  reconnoitre  a  cape  which  we  saw  at  a  distance, 
and  which  the  pilot  told  us  was  the  island  of  Yucatan. 
Between  it  and  the  point  of  Cucuniel  we  found  a  gulf  into 
which  we  entered,  and  came  near  the  shore  of  Cuzamil,  which 
we  coasted.  Besides  the  tower  which  we  had  seen  we  dis- 
covered fourteen  others  of  the  same  form."  The  Spaniards 
landed  100  armed  men,  and  came  to  the  chief  tower,  where 
they  found  no  one.  "  The  ascent  to  this  tower  was  by 
eighteen  steps  ;  the  base  was  very  massive,  180  feet  in  cir- 
cumference. At  the  top  rose  a  small  tower  of  the  height  of 
two  men  placed  one  above  the  other.     Within  were  figures, 

bones,  and  idols  which  they  adored The  village  was 

paved  with  concave  stone.  The  streets,  elevated  at  the  sides, 
descended,  inclining  towards  the  middle,  which  was  paved 
with  large  stones.  The  houses  are  constructed  of  stone  from 
the  foundation  to  half  the  height  of  the  wall  and  covered  with 
straw.  To  judge  by  the  edifices  and  houses  these  Indians 
appear  to  be  very  ingenious." 

Of  these  temples  not  a  trace  now  remains  around  San 
Miguel  save  at  the  north  end,  where  a  path  through  a  plantation 
of  cocoanuts  leads  to  such  a  scene  of  vandaUsm  as  might  be 
calculated  to  rouse  the  indignation  of  even  the  Conservator 
of  Monuments,  if  he  remained  awake  long  enough  to  reach  the 
spot.  Here  what  had  obviously  been  a  minor  temple  has 
been  broken  up  and  converted  into  a  quarry.  Heaps  of  stones, 
broken  past  recognition,  lie  in  a  confused  heap  with  smashed 
Indian  pottery.  The  largest  stones  have  been  carted  into  the 
village,  and  formed  a  pathetic  hotch-potch  in  a  garden  close 
to  our  hut.  One  of  these  was  a  remarkable  carving  repre- 
senting a  figure  of  a  god  seated  cross-legged,  in  true  Buddhist 
attitude,  in  a  niche. 

Stephens  in  1842  merely  landed  in  the  bay  of  San  Miguel, 
and  made  no  attempt  at  any  survey  of  the  island,  and  states 
its  length  quite  incorrectly  as  thirty  miles.  Cozumel  is  roughly 
rhomboidal  in  shape,  and  from  its  extreme  north-east  to  its 
extreme  south-west  is  as  near  as  can  be  fifty-four  miles.  Its 
breadth  varies,  but  on  an  average  is  about  fifteen  miles.  At 
each  comer  of  the  island  there  are  ruins,  those  on  the  north- 
east being  the  best  preserved.  The  group  consists  of  two 
buildings  still  intact,  one  practically  on  the  beach  and  the 
second  a  few  yards  in  the  bush.  They  are  but  small,  and  might 
easily  answer  Grijalva's  description,  being  simply  one-storeyed, 
unornamented  with  hieroglyphics  or  figures.      These  ruined 


170  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

structures  at  each  comer  of  the  island  certainly  suggest  that 
in  the  years  long  past  the  coasts  were  sacred  and  all  landing 
was  challenged. 

At  El  Cedral  we  were  told  that  there  were  ruins  intact, 
and  we  made  arrangements  at  once  to  ride  over  there.  The 
road  is  just  the  winding  coast-path  which  girdles  the  island. 
At  no  part  more  than  a  yard  or  two  wide,  it  leads  at  first  over 
the  flattened  ledges  of  coral  which  divide  the  beach  from  the 
woods.  Then  as  the  woods  thicken  to  the  water  edge,  you  ride 
through  tunnels  of  greenery,  where  the  road  traverses  the 
wooded  bases  of  the  triangles  of  coral  which  at  intervals  jut 
out  from  the  shore  like  the  spikes  on  a  dog's  collar,  to  emerge 
again  on  to  level  stretches  of  golden  sand,  the  palms  bending 
rustlingly  over  its  glittering  surface.  Here  and  there,  where 
the  coral  promontories  lay  close  together,  were  quiet  bays, 
the  trees  growing  far  out  on  the  little  capes  making  horseshoe- 
shaped  green  frames  for  the  sapphire-blue  water  lying  almost 
pond-Uke  in  its  stillness. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  beauty  of  this 
sunny  ocean-path,  playing,  in  its  long  arbours  of  woodland, 
hide-and-seek  with  the  sun  and  the  sea.  The  long  stretches 
of  sand  are  everywhere  rich  with  perhaps  the  most  beautiful 
shell  in  the  world,  that  giant  gasteropod  technically  called 
Strombus  but  commonly  known  as  fountain-shell.  It  is  the 
largest  gasteropod  known, — the  shell  sometimes  weighing  four 
or  five  pounds, — and  the  much  expanded  outer  lip,  which 
earns  it  the  popular  nickname  of  "  wing-shell,"  is  coloured 
the  richest  rose  pink,  shading  off  towards  the  inner  curve  of 
the  shell  into  an  exquisite  and  delicate  salmon  tint.  These 
shells  are  so  lovely  that  it  is  hard  to  believe  their  inhabitants 
feed  on  dead  and  decaying  animal  matter.  On  this  Cozumel 
shore  they  are  not  numbered  by  twos  or  threes  or  half  dozens, 
but  are  literally  scattered  in  myriad  profusion.  The  natives 
break  up  the  shells  with  machetes  and  eat  the  fish.  In  the 
little  coral  coves  it  is  nothing  unusual  to  see  the  whole  surface 
of  the  rocks  littered  with  this  wonderful  rose-pink  debris. 

Don  Luis  Villanueva,  whose  name  had  been  mentioned 
to  us  in  reference  to  his  alleged  discovery  of  a  temple  in  the 
bush,  owns  the  little  rancho  of  San  Francisco,  some  six  miles 
north  of  El  Cedral.  We  arrived  there  about  midday,  very 
hot  and  very  hungry.  Don  Luis  proved  to  be  a  wiry  little 
sallow-faced  man,  small-featured,  with  keen  small  eyes,  short 
grizzled  hair,  drooping  straggly  moustache,  and  one  long  tuft 


IN    SEARCH    OF   THE    MAYAN    MECCA  171 

of  grey  growing  from  the  extreme  end  of  his  chin  Hke  the 
beard  of  a  billygoat.  His  farmhouse  was  simpHcity  itself, 
formed  of  wood-stake  palisading  thatched  with  palm-leaves. 
Within,  the  only  furniture  were  string  hammocks,  two  or  three 
low  raw-hide-seated  stools,  a  trestle-Uke  table  formed  of  un- 
hewn poles  bound  together,  raft  fashion,  with  lianas,  supported 
on  four  small  unbarked  tree  trunks.  The  floor  was  just  the 
natural  earth,  and  in  one  comer  of  the  hut  a  fire  burnt. 
Every  Yucatecan  builds  his  fire  on  the  floor  inside  his  house 
in  this  way,  with  no  arrangements  for  chinmey,  and  the 
wonder  is  the  huts  are  not  oftener  burnt  down. 

In  the  further  comer  were  piled  bales  of  tobacco-leaf  and 
sacks  of  rough  cotton.  From  the  rafters  hung  open  baskets 
filled  with  tortillas,  green  and  red  peppers,  onions  and  fruits, 
and  here  and  there  hung  a  bunch  of  bananas  ripening.  Don 
Luis  is  a  widower  and  his  housekeeping  was  done  by  his  daugh- 
ter, a  pretty  brown-skinned  girl  of  about  twenty.  Whose  single 
thin  garment  of  cotton  only  accentuated  the  plump  attrac- 
tiveness of  her  figure.  As  all  Yucatecan  women  always  are, 
she  was  at  the  metate  or  tortilla-tray  when  we  entered,  but 
left  her  work  and  came  forward  prettily  to  greet  us.  The  other 
inhabitants  of  the  hut  were  Don  Luis's  two  grandsons,  healthy, 
black-eyed,  intelhgent-looking  little  rascals,  and  a  host  of 
terribly  emaciated  dogs  and  puppies,  melancholy  half-fed 
brindled  cats,  so  thin  that  they  looked  as  if  they  had  not  got 
a  purr  in  them,  and  the  inevitable  chickens  and  pigs. 

After  we  had  had  some  food,  Don  Luis  saddled  his  horse 
and  led  the  way  through  the  woods  to  El  Cedral.  He  made 
a  picturesque  figure  ahead  of  us,  the  quaint  little  wiry  brown- 
legged  form  in  its  loose  cottons  and  big  soup-plate  straw  hat, 
his  bare  feet  deep  in  the  Mexican  stirrups,  his  right  hand 
etemally  swinging  the  loose  end  of  the  lassoo  rope  fastened 
on  the  saddlebows.  Yucatecan  horses  are  good  goers,  but 
they  want  understanding.  It's  a  case  of  spare  the  rope  and 
spoil  the  horse.  Every  Yucatecan  rider  swings  his  lassoo 
rope  the  whole  time.  The  horse  does  not  want  to  be  beaten  ; 
it's  enough  that  he  sees  the  rope  going  round,  and  then  he  keeps 
going.  We  reached  the  village  while  the  sun  was  still  blazing 
high.  A  cluster  of  palm-thatched  huts  grouped  round  a  square 
of  wiry  grass — these  Yucatecan  hamlets  are  as  like  as  peas 
in  a  pod.  The  male  villagers  streamed  out  to  welcome  us 
with  a  cordiaUty  which  was  quite  overwhelming.  We  really 
thought  that  at  last  we  had  found  the  exception  which  proved 


172  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  rule  of  Yucatecan  avarice  and  inhospitality.  El  Cedral 
received  us  with  open  arms.  El  Cedral  walked  behind  us  in 
its  fifties,  applauding  our  attempts  at  Spanish  civilities,  laugh- 
ing when  we  laughed,  grave  when  we  were  grave.  El  Cedral 
begged  us  to  stay  with  it ;  indeed  would  take  no  refusal.  El 
Cedral  insisted  that  to  us  should  be  paid  the  meed  of  honour 
due  to  such  distinguished  visitors,  namely  that  our  hammocks 
should  be  slung  for  the  night  in  the  Casa  Municipal,  the  village 
town  hall ;  a  distinction  much  as  if  London's  Lord  Mayor 
gave  you  leave  to  sling  your  hammocks  in  the  Guildhall  between 
Gog  and  Magog.  And  El  Cedral  developed  an  inordinate 
interest  in  procuring  for  supper  just  what  might  tickle  our 
palates.     But  we  were  doomed  to  disillusionment. 

First,  we  started  to  inspect  the  ruins.  They  were  singu- 
larly disappointing.  The  chief  one  was  a  two-roomed  house 
standing  on  a  mound  some  20  feet  square.  There  were  no 
statues,  no  bas-reliefs,  no  hieroglyphics.  It  was  desolate 
enough,  but  it  had  had,  we  learnt,  its  modern  uses ;  for  five 
years  back  when  a  terrible  hurricane  had  swept  the  island 
the  whole  village  had  been  blown  away,  and  this  Indian  ruin 
was  for  days  the  only  shelter  of  the  disconsolate  villagers. 
Next,  an  almost  violent  discussion  occurred  among  our  score 
or  so  of  self-appointed  guides.  It  seemed  on  the  point  of 
developing  into  civil  war,  when  we  luckily  gathered  that  our 
old  friends  the  garrapatas  were  the  cause  of  all  the  trouble. 
The  villagers  wanted  to  show  us  another  ruin,  but  they  were 
so  distressed  at  the  thought  that  we  should  get  covered  with 
the  insects  in  our  walk  thither.  It  took  some  minutes  to  per- 
suade them  that  we  were  quite  accustomed  to  this  etcetera  of 
travel  in  their  country,  and  then,  with  half  a  dozen  men  and 
boys  whipping  with  twigs  the  bushes  on  each  side,  and  sweep- 
ing the  path  before  us,  we  made  our  way  through  the  bush  to 
a  fine  arched  doorway  hopelessly  overgrown.  Another  such 
had  stood  some  yards  away,  relics  evidently  of  a  once  consider- 
able building.  There  was  nothing  much  worth  seeing  now, 
but  we  concealed  our  disappointment  as  well  as  we  could,  for 
the  El  Cedralites  were  really  so  friendly  that  we  were  ashamed 
to  let  them  think  that  we  viewed  our  journey  as  a  fiasco.  As 
we  returned  into  the  village  a  little  lad,  after  a  shy  consultation 
with  his  father,  sidled  up  to  one  of  us  and  picked  a  garrapatas 
off  our  shoulder,  blushing  at  his  boldness. 

We  supped  in  an  Indian  hut,  and  then  in  the  moonlight  sat 
out  on  the  village  green,  talking  astronomy,  of  all  things.     De- 


INJ  SEARCH   OF   THE   MAYAN    MECCA         173 

spite  linguistic  disabilities,  we  prevailed  upon  the  Yucatecan 
villagers  to  believe  that  the  glorious  moonlight  was  borrowed. 
But  the  children  did  not  care  about  solar  or  lunar  problems, 
and  they  romped  round  us  with  the  dogs,  tumbling  over  one 
another  in  the  ecstasy  of  their  play,  content  that  they  were 
young  and  happy,  and  that  chubby  brown  legs  were  made  to 
run  with.  It  was  quite  Arcadian — this  little  village,  with  the 
homely  lights  streaming  out  from  the  white-faced  huts,  the 
merry  laughter  of  the  youngsters,  the  caressing  warmth  of 
the  night  air,  and  the  blackness  of  the  rustling  trees  flashing 
into  a  myriad  ever-shifting  points  of  light  as  the  fireflies  flew 
from  bough  to  bough.  We  slept  well  in  the  town  hall,  the 
village  clock  of  large  American  make,  brightest  jewel  in  the 
mimicipal  crown,  ticking  in  homely  fashion  behind  us.  But 
with  the  dawn  we  were  disillusioned  as  to  the  hospitality  of 
Arcady,  for  we  found  we  had  to  "  foot  "  quite  a  large  bill  for 
our  entertainment.  This  is  really  one  of  the  most  difficult 
problems  in  Yucatan.  You  never  know  whether  you  are  a 
paying  guest  or  not.  The  head  of  a  village  orders  your  meals, 
accompanies  you  to  them,  and  sees  that  you  lack  for  nothing. 
You  naturally  regard  him  as  your  host  ;  but  if  he  is  a  Yucatecan 
this  is  the  last  thing  he  intends.  The  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact 
that  the  true  Spaniard  is  hospitable,  and  would  never  forgive 
the  insult  of  money  offered  for  a  meal,  and  you  never  quite 
feel  safe  in  assuming  that  the  half-bred  don  expects  you  to  pay. 
He  may  just  have  Spanish  blood  enough  to  resent  the  offer 
of  money. 

Our  ride  back  to  San  Miguel  was  uneventful.  Before 
leaving  Don  Luis  we  cross-examined  him  as  to  the  ruin  he  had 
seen  forty  years  back,  and  arranged  that  he  should  come  on 
in  a  day  or  two  to  help  in  the  search.  He  described  it  as  being 
approached  by  some  fifteen  steps,  about  a  foot  wide  each  ; 
as  having  two  doors,  ceihng  of  stone,  floor  of  cement  or  stone  ; 
no  seats  or  ornaments  within,  no  figures,  carvings  or  hiero- 
glyphics, but  the  inner  walls  painted  in  blue  scrollwork.  From 
the  eastern  doorway  he  remembered  seeing  the  sea  plainly 
over  many  miles  of  woodland.  As  we  were  dismounting 
outside  our  headquarters  at  San  Miguel  a  terrific  to-do  occurred 
in  the  village  street.  There  were  cries  of  "El  toro  !  el  toro !  " 
and  the  women  rushed  out  from  the  huts  to  gather  the  children 
together  and  take  them  into  shelter.  We  thought  at  least  a 
wild  bull  had  come  down  from  the  woods  and  was  disembowel- 
ling the  Jefe.     A  minute  more  and,  to  our  surprise,  there  came 


174  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

round  the  comer  an  undersized  black  steer,  one  man  in  front 
hauling  on  a  rope  round  its  horns,  and  another  behind  with  a 
long  pole.  It  was  just  such  a  youthful  bullock  as  an  English 
country  lout  would  have  spanked  out  of  his  way  in  the  farm- 
yard.    Gallant  Yucatecans  ! 

We  spent  the  next  few  days  arranging  our  plan  of  campaign 
for  the  search  for  Mecca.  It  was  quite  astonishing  how  Uttle 
anybody  knew  of  the  topography  of  the  island.  They  were 
all  content  to  hve  on  year  after  year  and  never  venture  more 
than  three  or  four  miles  into  the  forest.  Don  Luis  knew  more 
than  any  one,  and,  having  stumbled,  quite  by  accident  in 
pursuit  of  a  pig,  over  a  remarkable  ruin,  he  had  been  content 
to  let  forty  years  pass  without  attempting  to  revisit  the  spot. 
Roughly  Cozumel  is  divided  into  three  half  circles  ;  a  belt,  on 
the  west  coast,  of  cultivated  ground ;  an  inner  belt,  but  a  few 
miles  wide,  of  woodland  in  which  cattle  roam,  more  or  less  inter- 
sected by  Indian  trails  ;  and  then  the  forest.  In  the  work  before 
us  horses  were  no  good ;  every  foot  of  ground  must  be  won 
from  the  relentless  vegetation  by  axe  and  machete.  We  arranged 
that  Don  Luis  and  his  four  sons  should  hunt  Mecca  on  his  clue. 
Avarice  is  the  besetting  sin  of  all  Yucatecans,  so  we  agreed 
to  pay  him  a  daily  wage,  and  tempted  him  into  assiduity  by 
the  promise  of  a  large  lump  sum  if  he  found  the  temple.  It 
was  worth  anything  to  us  if  we  succeeded  ;  but  we  did  not 
let  the  shrewd-eyed  knave  know  that.  Our  own  search  party 
consisted  of  our  two  selves  and  an  excellent  Indian,  whose 
knowledge  of  the  forest  seemed  "  extensive  and  peculiar." 
We  drew  a  map  of  the  island,  marking  a  "  probable  area  " 
whereabouts  tradition  suggested  Mecca  lay,  and  then  we 
plunged,  compass  in  hand,  into  the  bowels  of  Cozumel. 

We  steered  first  to  the  east  coast.  An  Indian  trail  leads 
thither  to  where,  some  few  miles  from  the  beach,  is  a  spring 
of  fresh  water  and  the  relics  of  an  Indian  town.  Attracted  by 
the  water  supply,  an  attempt  had  been  made  in  recent  years 
to  clear  the  ground  there.  But  vegetation  in  Cozumel  is  luxu- 
riant, and  the  space  cleared  one  season  is  by  the  next  four  feet 
high  in  undergrowth.  This  well  was  known  as  San  Benito. 
We  rechristened  it  San  Mosquito,  for  the  fury  of  the  Cancun 
insects  paled  before  the  winged  inhabitants  of  this  spot  which 
we  chose  for  our  headquarters  for  the  next  three  weeks. 

The  man  of  science  will  tell  you  that  there  are  two  types 
of  mosquitoes.  There  is  the  one  which,  out  of  the  pure  high 
spirits  generated  by  getting  at  you,  stands  on  its  head  and 


IN   SEARCH    OF    THE   MAYAN    MECCA         175 

waves  its  hind  legs  in  the  air  before  it  samples  your  gore.  This 
is  the  Anopheles,  which  "  travels  in  "  malaria  and  elephantiasis. 
And  then  there  is  the  more  sedate  self-controlled  type  which 
keeps,  one  might  say,  an  even  keel  on  aUghting.  This  is  the 
Culex,  which  makes  a  "  special  line  "  in  yellow  fever.  We 
should  hke  to  venture  on  an  entirely  new  and  strictly  psy- 
chological division  of  these  midget  fiends,  and  class  them  as 
"  the  Dervish  mosquito  "  and  "  the  philosopher  mosquito." 

When  one  gets  several  thousand  miles  away  from  mos- 
quitoes, it  is  quite  curious  how  sympathetically  one  can 
reflect  upon  the  disappointment  their  life  must  often  be  to 
them.  Their  life  is  very  brief — a  week  or  so ;  and  their  normal 
diet  is  insipid  in  the  extreme — a  drop  or  two  of  the  juice  or 
moisture  of  fruit.  Now  a  mosquito  yearns  for  blood  as  an 
old  maid  does  after  a  husband,  and  for  Nature  to  condemn 
it  to  a  week  or  two  of  life  sustained  on  the  moisture  of  plants 
is  like  feeding  a  lion  on  bread  and  milk.  One's  sympathies 
are  all  with  the  mosquito  so  far.  There  is  no  hell  like  un- 
satisfied longings  ;  and  if  one  good  long  drink  of  blood  means 
one  more  mosquito  happy,  only  a  churl  would  grudge  it. 
What  one  does  feel  that  one  has  a  right  to  demand  is  that 
mosquitoes  should  study  to  have  "  a  good  bedside  manner." 
This  is  just  what  they  lack.  One  would  find  it  hard  to  forgive 
a  dentist  who,  forceps  in  hand,  danced  a  wild  cancan  before 
you  as  you  writhed  in  anticipation  in  his  chair.  Yet  this, 
in  effect,  is  just  what  the  Dervish  mosquito  does.  It  comes 
at  you  with  the  speed  of  a  rocket,  with  the  whizz  and  whirr 
of  a  racing  motor.  It  hurls  itself  at  you  with  the  rage  and 
energy  of  a  fanatic.  It  bustles  and  flusters  you,  when  it 
really  ought  to  soothe  you  by  its  gentle  approach,  so  that  your 
better  nature  might  get  the  mastery  and  incline  you  to  say 
"  drink,  pretty  creature,  drink."  This  is  all  very  short- 
sighted of  the  mosquito.  One  feels  as  did  the  French  general 
at  Balaclava,  as  he  watched  the  charge  of  the  Light  Brigade, 
that  "  it  is  magnificent  but  it  is  not — '  cricket.'  " 

But  the  mosquito  caimot  help  all  this.  It  is  a  sublime 
enthusiast.  It  chucks  good  maimers  and  caution  to  the 
wind.  Think  of  its  damp  and  dreary  past,  its  blighted  life 
in  a  dank  forest,  nourished  on  the  moisture  of  plants  !  And 
then,  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue,  comes  a  human  being  !  Along 
the  serried  ranks  of  mosquitoes  the  signal  runs,  "  Blood ! " 
The  mosquitoes  "  see  blood."  They  are  metamorphosed 
into  fanatics  as  wholehearted  as  the    Dervishes  who,  spear 


176  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

in  hand,  see  the  joys  of  Paradise  and  its  black-eyed  houris 
before  them.  If  a  mosquito  was  not  a  fanatic,  it  would  not 
make  such  a  noise.  A  fanatic  always  dies  shrieking.  There 
is  nothing  which  prevents  the  Dervish-mosquito  from  alight- 
ing quietly  and  getting  to  work  long  before  you  knew  it 
was  there.  The  philosopher-mosquito  does.  It  lights  on  you 
with  such  elastic  tread  that  the  most  sensitive  skin  would  not 
feel  it  ;  and  then  it  gets  to  work  with  the  cold,  calm,  cynical 
assurance  of  a  practised  dissector.  But  this  has  its  drawbacks 
too.  The  philosopher-mosquito  is  in  danger  by  reason  of  its 
own  absorption.  Concentrated  upon  its  long  drink,  it  gets 
killed  in  a  humiliating  way,  like  a  man  on  whom  a  five-ton 
chunk  of  stone  falls  from  a  steam  crane  while  he  has  his  nose 
in  a  can  of  beer.  The  Dervish-mosquito,  on  the  other  hand, 
falls  fighting,  brandishing  its  spear,  its  wild  battle-cry  on  its 
lips.  One  cannot  help  admiring  the  Dervish-mosquito  the 
most. 

There  were  two  or  three  old  palm-thatched  huts  at  San 
Benito,  and  we  slung  our  hammocks  in  the  best-preserved 
one.  If  we  lived  a  century  we  should  never  forget  our  nights 
there.  It  is  ridiculous  to  call  them  nights.  They  were  not 
nights  at  all ;  they  were  orgies  of  blood  and  death.  The 
mosquitoes  flew  at  us,  shrieking  like  rockets ;  and  we 
hammered  them  to  death  on  one  cheek  or  wiped  them  off 
from  the  other.  The  persistence  of  those  insects  was  truly 
appalling.  We  tried  everything.  We  had  heard  that  if  you 
let  mosquitoes  alone  they  are  content  with  one  bite.  Either 
there  is  nothing  in  this  theory  or  the  insects  of  San  Benito 
were  the  exceptions  which  proved  the  rule.  With  a  patience 
worthy  of  a  racked  Galileo  we  lay  quite  still  and  invited  them 
to  become  "  free  fooders,"  We  prayed  them  to  "  bid  us 
good-bye  and  go."  But  they  would  not  go.  They  found 
parting  such  sweet  sorrow.  Never  did  Mary  Jane's  young  man 
linger  with  such  persistence  in  the  hall  over  his  adieus  as  did 
those  insects.  They  were  not  content  with  "  one  stroke  and 
divide."  They  flew  off  to  the  woods — at  least  a  few  of  them 
did — and  brought  a  lot  more.  From  free  fooders  they  turned 
into  whole-hoggers.  They  had  no  gratitude,  these  winged 
gluttons.  They  were  overdoing  it.  It  was  not  really  kind, 
we  felt,  to  encourage  them  in  thus  laying  up  the  seeds  of 
disease  for  their  old  age.  So  we  "  called  time  "  and  started 
on  new  tactics. 

We  had  no  nets  ;    but  we  covered  ourselves  up  with  our 


IN   SEARCH   OF   THE    MAYAN    MECCA         177 

blankets,  and  for  a  few  pleasant  moments  we  cynically  enjoyed 
listening  to  the  shrieks  of  the  Dervishes  as  they  threw  them- 
selves upon  the  wool.  Then  there  was  a  lull  and  silence  ;  and 
after  a  time,  as  it  was  stifling  hot,  we  had  to  put  our  heads  out  to 
breathe,  and  then  ...  oh.  Lord  !  then  we  realised  the  persis- 
tence of  the  mosquito.  It  is  the  "  bitter  beast,  which  bides  its 
time  and  bites."  It  did  bide  its  time.  It  mounted  guard  like 
a  policeman  on  point  duty,  and  when  we  appeared  it  seemed 
to  shriek,  "  Now  I've  got  you  !  "  as  it  hurled  itself  forward. 
The  reckless  courage  of  those  insects  simply  compelled  ad- 
miration. They  did  not  care  about  death,  they  did  not  care 
how  heavy  your  hand  was,  they  did  not  care  if  in  their  eager- 
ness they  got  inside  your  hammock  and  you  rolled  on  them. 
They  only  wanted  blood  ;  your  blood,  and  they  died  happy, 
drinking  it.  Death  was  sweet  to  them  if  they  could  reach 
you.  Like  the  bees  of  whom  Virgil  sings,  "  Animasque  in 
vulnere  ponunt,  they  joyfully  left  their  lives  in  the  wound. 
We  blasphemed  so  shockingly  that  we  lost  all  respect  for  each 
other.  As  the  tropic  night  wore  on  our  language  wore  out. 
We  racked  our  memories  for  the  foulest  words,  the  most 
blood-curdling  oaths  we  had  ever  heard,  until  at  last  we 
reached  such  a  point  of  desperation  that  we  felt  hke  leaping 
from  our  hammocks,  firing  a  feu-de-douleur  from  all  six 
chambers  of  our  revolvers,  and  then  committing  suicide  by 
hurling  ourselves  down  the  well.  Seriously  though,  during 
all  the  days  we  spent  at  San  Benito  we  never  got  a  good  night's 
rest ;  and  with  the  dreary  diet  of  tortillas,  rice,  and  eggs,  one 
has  to  be  a  very  enthusiastic  ruin-hunter  not  to  get  thoroughly 
sick  of  the  work. 

To  those  who  ramble  at  will  through  the  sun-lit  forests 
of  England,  France,  or  the  Tyrol,  who  know  no  other,  no  real 
conception  of  the  task  before  us  is  possible.  Byron  in  Childe 
Harold  sings  :  "  There  is  a  pleasure  in  the  pathless  woods." 
Aye,  and  there  is  a  terror — not  the  terror  of  hunger  or  of  cold, 
not  the  terror  of  thirst  or  death,  but  a  terror  which  strikes 
you  dumb,  which  makes  you  cringe  before  the  awful  majesty 
of  Nature.  As  we  broke  into  the  dread  stillness  of  those 
woods  through  which  no  white  foot  had  ever  passed,  there 
came  upon  us  an  inexpressible  dread,  not  of  physical  dangers, 
for  there  were  none  ;  of  something,  we  knew  not  what,  as  of 
haunted  men.  As  we  hacked  our  way  foot  by  foot,  a  darkness 
not  of  night  but  of  a  dim,  shadowy  world,  peopled  by  the 
fantastic  shapes  of  trees,  which  had  tortured  each  other  into 

12 


178  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

twist  and  gnarl  in  their  fight  for  light,  came  on  us.  Work  ! 
Heavens,  how  we  worked  !  It  was  our  only  refuge  from  the 
dread.  We  worked  like  the  proverbial  niggers  ;  and  the 
sweat  poured  down  our  faces,  dribbled  into  eyes  and  ears, 
marked  great  stains  on  our  khaki,  and  moistened  the  handles 
of  our  axes  till  it  was  hard  to  hold  them  firm.  Outside  a 
myriad  birds  chorused  in  the  blaze  of  sunshine  we  had  left. 
From  bush  to  bush  the  glorious  cardinal  bird,  red  from  beak- 
point  to  tail-feathers,  flashed  its  miracle  of  colour  ;  green 
parrots  circled  and  screamed  ;  red-headed  woodpeckers  beat 
their  insistent  beats  on  the  hollowed  tree-trimk  ;  the  tchels, 
plump  bodies  electric  blue,  heads  and  wings  ebon,  clustered 
in  chattering  groups  amid  the  sugar-cane  ;  and  humming-birds 
of  purple,  green,  and  russet,  winged  lightning  flight  around  the 
blossoms.  Within  for  us  was  stillness — the  majestic,  awful 
stillness  of  God's  woodland.  No  creature  moved,  no  sound 
broke  the  silence,  no  ray  of  sunlight  filtered  in  upon  us  through 
the  black  canopy  of  leaf.  Only — weirdest  of  all — day  after 
day  there  fluttered  round  us  wherever  we  went  a  butterfly,  a 
monster  of  exquisite  blue,  five  inches  at  least  from  wing-point 
to  wing-point,  dancing  in  the  gloom  from  tree-trunk  to  tree- 
trunk  like  some  mascot.  It  pleased  us  to  imagine  that  it 
was  the  same  butterfly,  that  it  was  a  mascot  dancing  before 
us  to  show  us  the  way  to  Mecca.  It  was  a  pleasant  conceit, 
but  it  led  to  nothing.  The  butterfly  had  not  any  right  to 
be  out  of  the  sun  in  a  pitch-black  wood  ;  and  for  us  at  least 
he  never  "  cut  any  ice."  He  simply  fluttered  round  us  and 
did  no  good,  for  as  far  as  Mecca  was  concerned  our  almost 
savage  efforts  to  find  it  were  abortive. 

For  weeks  we  searched.  Our  only  way  of  retracing  our 
path  was  to  notch  the  trees  as  we  cut.  Night  by  night  we 
crept,  wearied  and  bhstered  and  torn,  out  of  the  forest.  Day 
by  day  we  started  again  cutting  and  recutting,  crossing  and 
recrossing,  east  to  west,  north  to  south,  at  every  half-mile 
sending  the  Indian  up  some  tree  to  spy  the  land.  Meanwhile 
oui  little  friend  Don  Luis  and  his  four  sons  had  joined  in  the 
chase,  and  they  worked  hard  too.  They  came  over  to  San 
Benito  with  a  pony  loaded  with  tortillas,  and  encamped  in 
the  other  hut,  whence  at  dawn  they  started  each  day  with 
a  dozen  dogs  to  ransack  that  part  of  the  forest  where  Don 
Luis  declared  the  temple  was.  But,  expert  woodmen  as  they 
were,  it  was  all  no  good.  Some  five  years  back  a  terrific 
hurricane  swept  over  Cozumel,  and  this,  Don  Luis  declared, 


FIRST  group:  cozumel  ruins. 


l8o  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

had  changed  the  whole  face  of  the  forest.  He  found  himself 
a  very  tyro  at  woodmanship  in  this  great  black  eight-hundred- 
square-mile  patch  of  woodland,  its  undergrowth  fenced  and 
littered  with  the  trunks  of  fallen  trees,  now  veritable  snares 
for  the  unwary,  buried  in  dense  shrub.  Don  Luis  richly  earned 
his  daily  pay.  He  did  not  care  about  temples,  but  he  did 
care  immensely  about  the  lump  sum  which,  as  the  carrots  in 
front  of  the  donkey,  we  had  dangled  in  front  of  his  Yucatecan 
avarice.  We  would  have  trebled  that  sum  if  he  could  have 
succeeded  ;  though  we  did  not  tell  him  so,  when,  with  almost 
tears  in  his  cunning  eyes,  he  formally  confessed  failure,  because 
to  have  told  him  so  might  have  really  driven  him  to  suicide. 

He  had  hunted  in  a  set  area,  and  we  had  wandered  at 
wiU  over  the  forest  in  all  directions  and  explored  Cozumel 
as  it  had  never  been  explored  before.  Thus  it  would  have 
been  a  marvel  if  we  had  not  found  something.  We  did.  We 
found  a  ruined  city  Ipng  at  equal  distance  from  San  Miguel 
and  San  Benito  towards  the  northern  end  of  the  island.  The 
ruins  were  in  two  groups  about  three-quarters  of  a  mile  apart, 
and  suggestive  of  a  once  quite  considerable  town.  The  first 
group  consisted  of  two  buildings  standing  a  few  yards  apart 
on  small  terraces  about  8  feet  high  and  facing  south-east. 
Both  two-roomed,  they  each  measured  40  feet  by  27,  a  small 
platform  extending  towards  the  south-east  making  each  terrace 
a  solid  block  of  40  feet  square.  On  the  outside  they  are 
both  unornamented,  but  the  inside  walls  of  the  one  on  the  north- 
east are  ornamented  from  the  floor  to  where  the  roof  com- 
mences with  that  curious  decoration  which  is  met  with  again 
and  again  in  so  many  Mayan  buildings — the  red  hand.  It 
was  the  best  preserved  of  this  kind  of  decoration  we  had 
seen  in  the  islands  or  on  the  mainland,  and  by  the  curious 
formation  of  some  of  the  marks  it  is  certain  that  they  were 
not,  as  is  supposed,  impressions  made  by  dipping  the  hand 
in  colour  or  in  blood  and  then  stamping  it  on  the  wall.  They 
seem  rather  to  have  been  made  with  a  straight  five-toothed 
instrument  like  a  painter's  graining-comb.  Around  this 
whole  colouring  was  ascroUwork  pattern  of  the  same  tint, 
giving  it  the  appearance  of  a  frame. 

Fifty  yards  in  front  of  these  two  buildings  stood  a 
third  facing  west  and  measuring  80  feet  by  30  and  consisting 
of  a  small  one-roomed  house  and  a  pillared  temple,  the  roofs 
of  which  had  both  fallen.  Here,  as  at  Cancun,  we  were  struck 
by  the  prevalence  of  the  rounded  pillars.     Half-way  between 


vO 


5r,    <  .V;5 


^^ -^.v  r^  ^^bL-^?-^^ 


i82  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  first  and  the  second  ruins  were  the  remains  of  two  more 
buildings,  but  these  were  so  shattered  as  to  defy  any  attempts 
at  a  suggestion  of  what  they  had  been  hke.  At  the  back  of 
the  first  set,  standing  isolated  in  the  bush,  was  a  remarkable 
monolithic  rounded  pillar  close  on  9  feet  high. 

The  second  group  of  ruins  stands  away  some  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  through  the  woods  to  the  westward.  We  were 
attracted  thither  by  the  appearance  of  a  gigantic  clump  of 
trees  towering  up  above  the  others  as  if  marking  the  spot  of 
some  ancient  mounds.  On  arrival  there  we  found  that  it 
did  not  consist  of  one  mound  but  three,  all  joining  at  their 
base  and  of  rough  unhewn  stone.  They  averaged  about 
40  feet  in  height.  On  the  ground-level  at  the  side  of  them 
stood  a  small  one-roomed  house,  probably  the  home  of  a  priest 
or  custodian  whose  duty  was  to  watch  over  these  pyramids. 
These  mounds  were  remarkable  not  only  by  the  fact  of  their 
queer  juxtaposition  but  for  the  fact  that  on  careful  examina- 
tion we  found  no  trace  of  a  building  of  any  sort  upon  the  top 
of  them.  That  they  were  artificial  there  can  be  no  shadow 
of  doubt.  That  they  were  look-outs  like  the  mounds  examined 
by  us  on  the  coast  is  impossible,  for  in  the  heart  of  the  island 
they  could  have  served  no  such  purpose.  What  we  would 
suggest  is  that  Cozumel  formed  at  one  time  a  Mayan  Valhalla 
where,  by  reason  of  the  intense  sanctity  of  the  soil,  the  bodies 
of  the  greatest  caciques  and  the  most  revered  of  priests  were 
brought  from  the  mainland  to  be  buried  in  the  sacred  isle. 
Thus  these  three  mounds  we  believe  to  be  simply  sepulchral, 
the  excavation  of  which — a  gigantic  task — would  probably 
prove  of  the  greatest  interest.  We  had  heard  a  rumour  of 
the  existence  in  the  northern  woods  of  a  large  stone  and 
cemented  dome-shaped  building,  doorless  and  sealed  all  round. 
We  tried  to  find  this  but  failed.  This,  too,  was  probably  a 
tomb. 

About  a  himdred  yards  to  the  north-east  of  this  trio  of 
mounds  stood  a  castillo  on  a  pyramid,  the  two-roomed  building 
on  the  top  being  reached  by  a  stairway  on  the  south-west. 
The  temple  was  unadorned  by  any  paintings,  ornaments  or 
hieroglyphics,  but  was  remarkable  for  the  extraordinary  small- 
ness  of  the  apertures  which  apparently  served  for  doorways. 
The  ground-plans  of  this  ruined  city  which  are  reproduced 
will  give  some  idea  of  its  size. 

Again  and  again  in  the  woods  we  encountered  the  remnants 
of  what  appeared  to  be  a  series  of  concentric  walls.     They 


IN    SEARCH    OF    THE    MAYAN    MECCA         183 

were  certainly  artificial,  and  their  building  must  have  entailed 
immense  labour,  for  the  stones  were  often  very  large.  These 
wall  fragments  resemble  nothing  so  much  as  a  breastwork  or 
hastily  improvised  fortification.  We  have  two  theories  about 
them.  Either  the  island  was  originally  very  carefully  appor- 
tioned and  the  Holy  of  Holies  was  surrounded  by  a  series  of 
complete  walls,  at  distances  from  one  another  of  about  a  mile 
and  a  half,  which  served  as  a  series  of  milestones  for  the  pilgrims 
making  their  way  to  the  shrine  from  all  the  coasts  of  the  island ; 
or,  on  the  first  alarm  of  the  Spanish  invasion,  stone  fortifications 
were  roughly  improvised  around  Mecca  so  that,  if  the  foreigner 
ventured  into  the  forests,  each  wall  could  be  defended,  thus 
delaying,  if  not  actually  preventing,  his  reaching  the  temple. 
The  first  theory  gains  a  certain  support  from  the  fact  that 
in  some  places  we  found  suggestions  of  a  small  ruined  house 
attached  to  the  wall,  which  might  have  been  a  kind  of  toll- 
house where  the  pilgrims  paid  a  tribute  to  the  Mayan  hierarchy 
for  permission  to  pass. 

The  little  finds  we  made  in  the  shape  of  stone  axes,  pottery, 
beads,  and  so  on,  were  no  solace  to  us  for  our  disappointment. 
We  had  sought  Mecca  in  vain.  We  had  spared  neither  money 
nor  energy ;  and  we  had  just  this  comfort,  that  we  had  done 
more  in  the  exploration  of  the  island  than  anybody  before  us. 
Still  it  was  as  beaten  men  that  we  returned  after  our  mosquito- 
ridden  semi-starvation  sojourn  in  the  forest  to  San  Miguel. 
There  the  carnival  was  at  its  height.  Little  the  Yucatecans 
recked  of  ruined  temples  and  Mayan  problems.  It  was  enough 
for  them  that  the  sun  shone,  that  they  had  habanero  and  anise 
to  drink,  and  that  there  were  girls  to  dance  with  and  make 
love  to.  Tin-tray  music  and  a  charivari  of  drum  and  horn 
fought  for  mastery  over  wild  whistlings  and  cat-callings  and 
the  "  loud  laugh  which  spoke  the  vacant  mind."  The  few 
horses  of  the  island  had  been  requisitioned  to  carry  ludicrously 
drunk  Yucatecans  in  paper  caps  and  masks  up  and  down  the 
beach  and  round  the  plaza.  Those  who  could  not  ride  found 
satisfaction  sufficient  for  their  senseless  mirth  in  running  behind 
and  shouting.  We  were  hungry  to  escape  from  this  very 
unsatisf5ang  gaiety,  and  we  wanted  to  cross  to  the  mainland 
where,  exactly  opposite  Cozumel,  lie  the  ruins  of  Tuloom. 
But  this  proved  absolutely  impracticable.  As  we  have  said 
in  the  previous  chapter,  the  Indians  are  encamped  there,  and, 
thanks  to  the  brutal  treatment  they  have  received,  they  shoot 
white  men  at  sight.     No  boatman  could  be  found  to  cross  to 


i84  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  shore,  even  though  we  offered  such  record  prices  as  a 
hundred  dollars  for  the  ten  miles.  We  had  sent  a  message 
down  to  Ascension  Bay  to  General  Bravo  telling  him  of  our 
wish  to  land  on  the  coast  hereabouts,  and  asking  for  the  escort 
which  had  been  promised  us  by  the  officials  in  Mexico  City. 
The  General's  answer  was  a  pohte  shuffle.  He  did  not  want 
us  to  visit  his  headquarters,  and  he  knew  that  if  he  gave  us 
an  escort  not  a  man  of  it  would  survive  to  return  to  Ascension 
Bay.  He  delayed  answering  our  letter  until  he  felt  certain 
that  our  patience  was  exhausted,  and  that  we  should  have 
started  on  our  return  journey  for  the  north  coast.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  his  letter  followed  us  to  Merida,  and  was  such  a  tissue 
of  prevarication  as  proved  how  anxiously  he  guards  the 
secrets  of  his  ineffective  campaigning. 

In  truth,  his  position  was  a  difficult  one,  for  the  dangers 
to  which  we  asked  permission  to  expose  ourselves  and  de- 
manded that  he  should  expose  his  escort  are  very  real  indeed. 
An  attempt  to  explore  this  portion  of  the  eastern  littoral  would 
be  about  as  safe  as  jumping  in  front  of  an  express  train  travel- 
ling at  sixty  miles  an  hour.  Should  an  enthusiastic  archaeolo- 
gist endeavour  to  traverse  the  country,  there  is  little  uncer- 
tainty as  to  what  would  be  his  fate.  Committed  to  impene- 
trable forests,  trackless,  waterless  save  for  pools  in  the  hme- 
stone  rock,  hidden  under  matted  leaves  and  undergrowth, 
defying  better  eyes  than  his  to  find,  he  would  stumble  on, 
tripped  up  by  lianas,  wounded  by  thorns,  through  an  arboreal 
darkness  and  thickness  too  complete  for  his  eyes  to  see  ten 
yards.  But  every  inch  of  his  halting  progress  would  be 
watched.  Not  for  a  moment  would  he  escape  the  eyes  of  his 
enemies.  The  end  would  soon  come  ;  it  might  be  in  days  ; 
it  probably  would  be  only  hours.  Most  likely  while,  wearied 
out,  he  rested  on  a  fallen  tree-trunk  (for  centuries  of  Spanish 
bigotry  and  cruelty  and  the  mercilessness  of  latter-day  Mexi- 
cans have  robbed  the  Indian  of  all  claims  to  be  called  "  noble 
savage  " ;  to-day  he  is  no  sportsman,  but  shoots  his  game  sitting), 
a  shot,  fired  twenty-five  feet  from  him  in  the  bush,  would  be 
the  last  sound  he  would  ever  hear.  His  body,  rifled,  per- 
chance mutilated,  would  be  left  to  rot  where  it  lay — food  for 
the  myriad  cleanly  ants  and  earth-beetles  which  swarm  the 
matted,  tangled  bed  of  a  tropical  forest. 


CHAPTER   XI 

ON  THE   SOUTHERN   SIERRAS 

CARRIAGE  exercise  in  Yucatan  is  no  joke.  It  is  not 
the  gentle  fiction,  the  make-believe  of  exertion  played 
at  by  indolent  women  and  invalids,  to  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed. The  doctor  who  ordered  it  would  lie  under  the  grave 
suspicion  of  being  in  league  with  the  local  undertaker.  The 
invalid  who  took  it  would  need  nothing  further  save  a  shelter 
in  the  nearest  cemetery.  The  most  inveterate  OUver  Twist 
would  not  "  ask  for  more."  It  is  all  the  fault  of  the  roads 
and  natural  selection.  The  roads  are  unspeakable,  and  they 
have  evolved  an  unspeakable  vehicle.  None  but  a  carriage 
which  has  lost  all  respect  for  itself  and  its  passengers  could 
survive  an  hour  on  a  Yucatecan  road.  The  Yucatecan  road  is 
not  meant  for  carriages.  It  is  meant  for  chamois  goats  and 
those  black  ants  which  have  plenty  of  time  on  their  hands, 
and  consider  that  the  only  way  round  a  blade  of  grass  is  to 
climb  up  one  side  and  down  the  other. 

Time  is  really  what  you  want  on  a  Yucatecan  road.  You 
have  got  to  take  it  quietly  and  pick  your  way.  But  this  is 
not  the  programme  of  the  Yucatecan  carriage.  It  is  always 
in  a  hurry.  It  is  a  hurry-skurrying,  give-you-no-time-for- 
repentance  desperado  of  a  conveyance.  It  takes  you  in  and 
does  for  you.  It  blacks  your  eyes,  breaks  your  ribs,  bruises 
you.  It  gives  you  "  bloody  noses  and  cracked  crowns."  It 
does  not  care.  It  has  nothing  to  lose.  It  is  made  of  huge 
wheels,  stout  poles  and  rough  cord,  with  a  rabbit-hutch  on 
top  swinging  on  the  cords.  You  go  inside  the  rabbit-hutch 
and  you  try  to  stop  inside.  The  carriage  tries  to  get  you 
out.  That's  the  game.  You  can  play  it  as  long  as  you  like, 
as  long  as  you  have  a  bone  tmbroken  or  a  breath  in  your  body. 
The  carriage  does  not  mind.  It  is  always  there,  and  the  rocks 
in  the  roads  are  always  there  ;  and  the  two-inch  long  thorns 
on  the  hedges  are  always  there  to  scratch  your  eyes  out.     So 

185 


i86  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

that  all  day  long  you  can  play  at  carriage  exercise  in  Yucatan 
until  you  are  reduced  to  a  bruised  and  bleeding  mass. 

This  demon  vehicle  is  called  a  volan  coche  (flying  coach). 
It  is  quite  indigenous  and  home-grown.  It  is  not  even  known 
in  Mexico,  where  the  roads  are  bad  but  have  not  reached 
that  pitch  of  villainy  to  which  the  Yucatecan  roads  have 
attained.  It  is  drawn  by  three  mules  abreast,  the  centre  one 
in  the  shafts.  When  they  come  to  a  very  large  boulder  and 
the  wheels  stick,  they  pull,  pull  all  they  know,  and  very  slowly 
the  wheel  of  the  volan  climbs  that  boulder,  reaches  the  sum- 
mit, tips  you  to  an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees  on  the  non- 
boulder  side,  and  then  comes  down  with  a  sickening  thud 
over  the  precipice  edge  of  the  boulder  and,  if  you  are  not  careful, 
shoots  you  through  the  rabbit-hutch  side.  Nobody  need 
suffer  from  liver  in  Yucatan.  A  little  carriage  exercise,  and 
the  most  rebellious  liver  which  ever  made  a  hell  on  earth  for 
a  mortal  would  "  come  to  heel." 

We  tried  volan  riding.  We  had  to.  On  our  return  to  the 
mainland  there  was  no  other  way  for  us  to  cross  the  country 
except  by  buying  fresh  horses.  Our  volan  was  a  nice  volan 
as  volans  go.  It  had  a  mattress  in  it ;  a  tempting-looking 
soft  mattress  which  persuaded  you  that,  once  inside  the  rabbit- 
hutch,  you  would  really  be  quite  comfortable.  But  alas  ! 
it  was  a  delusion  and  a  snare.  That  mattress  was  in  league 
with  the  volan.  It  was  the  piece  of  toasted  cheese  in  the  volan 
mousetrap.  You  could  not  lie  on  that  mattress,  or  squat  on 
it,  or  kneel  on  it,  or  sit  cross-legged  on  it,  or  indeed  sit  anyhow 
on  it.  You  had  to  tie  yourself  up  like  those  rubbery  con- 
tortionists at  the  music  halls,  and  you  had  to  hold  on  to  the  iron 
stanchions  which  support  the  rabbit-hutch  roof  or  you  would 
not  have  had  a  whole  rib  left. 

In  our  "  Little  Ease  "  we  started  from  Tizimin  on  our 
return  journey  to  Merida  by  a  western  road  which  traversed 
a  portion  of  civilised  Yucatan  new  to  us.  This  is  the  Espita 
district.  Espita  is  a  prosperous  little  town,  the  centre  of  a 
quite  considerable  tobacco  industry.  Thence  we  entered  once 
more  the  henequen  country,  steering  for  the  village  of  Xuilub 
(pronounced  Schweeloo),  where  the  women  came  to  the  hut- 
doors  dressed,  or  rather  undressed,  as  we  had  seen  them  nowhere 
else.  Nothing  on  but  a  short  kilt  from  waist  'to  knee.  It 
was  a  long  ride,  and  it  is  sad  to  think  that  we  swore  the  whole 
way.  Fortunately  the  Yucatecan  driver  suffered  no  moral 
damage.     He  did  not  understand  a  syllable  of  our  blasphemy. 


ON   THE   SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  187 

He  probably  thought  we  were  talking  about  ruins,  and  that 
archaeologists  were  habitually  excitable  and  shouted  and 
screamed  when  they  talked  about  ruins.  It  is  a  melancholy 
fact  that  we  really  did  not  care  about  ruins  any  longer.  We 
were  far  too  absorbed  in  our  attempts  to  stop  inside  the  rabbit- 
hutch  and  in  our  collation  of  all  the  swear-words  we  could 
remember.  Finally  we  did  arrive  at  Merida  very  tired,  very 
dusty,  and  in  stained  khaki  suits  which  we  felt  to  be  a  positive 
disgrace  in  that  spick-and-span  town.  We  were  veritable 
Rip  Van  Winkles.  We  had  been  away  from  Merida  close  on 
four  months.  Diuring  that  time  no  letter  or  paper  had  been 
able  to  reach  us.  It  was  quite  a  queer  feeling,  and  there  was 
news  in  plenty — some  of  it,  alas  !  sad  enough — awaiting  us 
in  the  foot-deep  pile  of  letters  which  our  good  friend  Seiior 
Primitivo  Molina  of  the  Banco  Yucateco  handed  us. 

We  had  accomplished  our  purpose,  that  of  exploring  the 
hitherto  unmapped  and  untraversed  north-eastern  portions 
of  Yucatan  and  her  eastern  islands.  Negative  results  are 
very  often  quite  as  valuable  as  positive  results.  As  we  shall 
later  show,  a  great  deal  hangs,  as  far  as  our  explanations  of 
the  origin  of  the  Mayan  civihsation  are  concerned,  upon  the 
question,  until  now  undecided  but  raised  by  Stephens  more 
than  sixty  years  ago,  of  how  high  a  degree  of  perfection  the 
buildings  in  North-East  Yucatan  had  attained.  Our  tour  has 
satisfied  us  that  we  have  once  and  for  all  an  answer  to  that 
question.  Our  results  are  negative.  We  have  proved  that 
students  of  the  Mayan  problem  need  waste  no  time  in  expedi- 
tions to  the  north-east.  Ruins  there  are,  without  doubt,  which 
time  and  the  denseness  of  the  vegetation  prevented  us  from 
discovering  ;  but  those  ruins,  if  found  and  carefully  studied, 
would  not  add  an  iota  of  value  to  the  mass  of  evidence  for  and 
against  the  theories  which  have  been  advanced  in  explanation 
of  the  Mayan  problem.  For  the  future,  work  must  be  con- 
centrated, if  it  is  to  be  of  any  value,  upon  the  extreme  southern 
districts  of  Yucatan  and  the  Guatemalan  border.  The  troubled 
state  of  that  country,  the  hostihty  of  the  tribes  which  range 
it,  its  physical  difficulties,  must  for  some  years  to  come  render 
investigations  extremely  hazardous  and  unsatisfactory.  But 
when  eventually  the  districts  south  of  Lake  Peten  are  opened 
to  archaeology,  immense  progress  may  be  expected.  Under 
the  aegis  of  Mexico  the  opening  up  of  this  country  cannot,  we 
venture  to  believe,  ever  become  an  accomplished  fact.  But 
when  the  relations  between  the  governing  class  and  the  Indian 


i88  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

tribes  have  assumed  that  fitting  aspect  of  benevolence  and 
mutual  good-feeling  which  they  will  assume  so  soon  as  Central 
America  forms  a  portion  of  the  United  States,  the  whole  of 
that  archaeologically  rich  district  will  yield  up  its  secrets — 
probably  to  American  students,  who  are  already  showing  that 
they  grasp  the  importance  of  Southern  Yucatan, 

We  had  always  intended,  if  time  permitted,  to  travel  to 
the  south  of  Merida  and  view  for  ourselves  the  wonderful 
group  of  ruins  of  which  the  chief  are  Uxmal,  Labna,  Kabah,  and 
Sayil.  Thus,  after  a  day  or  two's  rest  and  before  we  threw 
off  our  uniform  of  khaki  and  returned  to  the  normal  collar-and- 
tie  state  of  civilisation,  we  started  out  for  Ticul.  This  is  the 
most  important  town  on  the  southern  branch  of  Yucatan's 
railways.  In  the  very  heart  of  cultivated  Southern  Yucatan, 
it  lies  under  the  northern  slope  of  that  chain  of  limestone 
hiUs  or  sierras  which  runs  across  Yucatan  from  Maxcanu  in 
the  north-west  to  Tekax  in  the  south-east.  Some  ten  miles  after 
leaving  the  southern  suburbs  of  Merida  is  the  pueblo  of  Acanceh, 
near  which  are  the  remains  of  an  Indian  city.  Here  an 
elaborately  carved  wall  has  been  discovered. 

Then  the  railway  passes  through  the  desolate  plains  of 
Mayapan.  For  some  miles  vegetation  is  sparse  or  non- 
existent, and  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see  is  a  desert  of  grey 
stone,  here  and  there  broken  by  small  treeless  hillocks, 
the  obvious  sites  of  Indian  buildings.  If  tradition  is  to  be 
credited,  the  city  of  Mayapan  was  the  most  important  of  all 
the  Indian  cities  at  or  about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  its  overthrowal  by  a  confederation  of  caciques  (about 
1462)  forms  the  most  important  certain  fact  of  Mayan  history 
in  the  century  immediately  preceding  the  Spanish  invasion. 
Professor  Eduard  Seler  has  laboured  to  show  that  the  name 
**  Mayapan  "  is  Mexican,  though  he  is  obliged  to  confess  that 
"  pan  "  in  Maya  means  flag  or  standard.  But  he  puts  aside 
this  very  simple  et3miology,  and  wants  to  find  a  purely  Mexican 
origin  for  the  word  he  translates  "  among  the  Mayas."  This 
is  hair-splitting.  Mayapan  was  the  "  flag  "  city,  the  chief 
city  of  the  Mayans,  just  as  the  flagship  of  a  fleet  is  its  chief 
vessel ;  and  it  seems  to  us  that  the  name  itself  affords  the 
fullest  proof  that  Mayapan  was  what  tradition  declares  it  to 
have  been,  the  headquarters  of  the  predominant  cacique  at 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth 
centuries.  Stephens,  who  made  a  fairly  careful  survey  of 
the  ruins  in  1842,  discovered  a  mound  60  feet  high  and  100 


ON   THE    SOUTHERN   SIERRAS  189 

feet  square  at  the  base.  Four  staircases,  each  25  feet  wide, 
ascended  to  an  esplanade  within  6  feet  of  the  top.  This 
esplanade  was  6  feet  wide,  and  on  each  side  a  smaller  staircase 
led  to  the  top.  The  summit  was  a  plain  stone  platform  15 
feet  square.  There  were  no  signs  of  building  on  it.  Stephens 
somewhat  rashly  assumes  that  this  was  its  normal  condition. 
It  is  far  more  probable  that  there  was  a  building  on  the  top, 
precisely  like  that  of  the  Castillo  at  Chichen  ;  and  either  by 
the  Mayans  themselves  at  the  destruction  of  the  city  or  by 
the  Spaniards,  it  was  thrown  down.  The  latter  are  the  most 
likely  offenders.  Mayapan  is  but  ten  leagues  south  of  Merida, 
and  the  fact  that  around  the  base  of  the  mound  Stephens 
found  mutilated  stone  figures  of  men  and  animals  with  dia- 
bolically distorted  faces,  obviously  idols,  suggests  that  Catholic 
vandals  had  been  at  work. 

Beyond  the  plain  of  Mayapan  the  rail  runs  through  a  rich 
henequen  country,  the  towns  and  villages  of  which  are  con- 
nected by  good  roads — for  Yucatan — and  ringed  with  neat 
gardens  of  orange,  lemon,  and  banana  trees.  Here  and  there 
at  the  wayside  stations  tiny  sets  of  metals,  on  which  stand 
small  open  tramcars  of  green,  yellow,  and  red  painted  slatted 
wood — each  drawn  by  a  mule — branch  off  to  haciendas  of 
which  the  white  walls  and  lofty  arched  gateways,  flanked 
with  substantial  stone  pillars,  suggest  the  entry  to  a  Spanish 
abbey  grounds  rather  than  to  a  money-making  house  and 
factory.  The  approach  of  the  hot  season  and  the  fact  that 
we  are  travelling  practically  due  south  are  evidenced  by  the 
far  larger  number  of  naked  children  seen,  and  at  one  hut-door 
a  little  maid  of  seven  or  eight  stands  quietly,  as  naked  as 
she  was  bom,  to  watch  the  train's  progress.  The  men,  too, 
who  work  in  the  gardens  or  drive  the  henequen  wagons  wear 
nothing  but  the  breech-cloth  and  soup-plate  straw  hats. 

Ticul,  which  we  reach  in  about  three  hours,  is  architecturally 
as  uninteresting  as  are  all  these  Yucatecan  towns.  It  has 
an  air  of  considerable  prosperity,  the  majority  of  the  houses 
being  of  stone,  the  flat-faced,  flat-roofed  type  which  is  so 
monotonous  in  Spanish  America.  Its  centre  is  a  great  plaza,  a 
rambling  square  of  grass,  one  side  of  which  is  occupied  by 
the  church  and  monastery.  The  church  is  a  fine  one  as  far  as 
size  goes,  and  is  in  good  preservation.  It  is  connected  with 
the  monastery  by  a  corridor  from  which  opens  that  portion 
of  the  latter  which  is  now  used  as  the  padre's  house.  It  is 
quite  possible  to  believe  the  reports  that  reached  us  of  this 


igo  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

ecclesiastic's  prosperity,  for  his  residence  approached  nearer 
than  anything  we  had  seen  in  the  country  to  the  comfort 
and  substantial  neatness  of  an  English  rectory.  Stephens 
described  the  monastery  as  "  grand."  We  were  disappointed. 
A  rambling  square  of  stucco,  terraced  and  arcaded  round  three 
sides  and  approached  from  the  street  by  a  narrow  flight  of  a 
dozen  steps,  the  building,  even  in  the  added  dignity  of  its 
ruined  condition,  is  nothing  but  a  plastered  monstrosity, 
as  typical  of  the  execrable  architectural  taste  of  the  Franciscans 
as  of  the  ugliness  and  arrogance  of  their  religion. 

The  inhospitality  of  these  Yucatecan  towns  to  the 
"stranger  that  is  within  their  gates"  really  beggars  ex- 
pression. We  knew  nobody  at  Ticul,  but  we  wanted  shelter 
for  the  night  and  food,  and  the  possibility  of  arranging  for 
the  hire  of  horses  for  the  morrow.  But  the  Yucatecan  does 
not  care  what  you  want.  His  one  idea  is  what  money  have 
you  got  which  he  can  wrest  from  you.  That  is  what  he  wants. 
If  you  look  dusty  and  travel-worn,  he  concludes  that  you  will 
not  be  a  good  payer,  and  any  inchoate  interest  which  the 
arrival  of  a  foreigner-fly  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of 
his  web  may  have  aroused  dies  down,  and  the  Yucatecan  spider 
returns  to  his  hammock.  Thus  it  was  that  we  found  ourselves 
as  the  night  fell  wandering  through  the  streets  of  Ticul,  almost 
as  mendicants,  begging  for  bread  from  door  to  door.  Nobody 
was  going  to  take  the  bother  to  prepare  a  meal  for  a  fair  price 
or  to  give  shelter  for  the  night  to  two  foreign  madmen  who 
were  demented  enough  to  be  interested  in  "  old  walls  "  and 
obstinate  enough  not  to  wish  to  be  "  plucked."  Finally  a 
Yucatecan  woman,  with  an  almost  intolerable  condescension, 
agreed  to  supply  our  humble  wants.  We  were  dead-beat,  and 
our  wanderings  among  the  hospitable  Indians  had  somewhat 
lulled  us  into  forgetfulness  of  the  golden  rule  that  in  Yucatan 
you  must  bargain  with  every  robber  before  you  enter  his  cave. 
We  did  indeed  ask  how  much  the  supper  would  cost  ;  but 
the  woman's  reply,  that  prices  at  Ticul  were  not  exorbitant 
like  those  at  Merida,  was  given  with  such  artless  guile  that 
we  dropped  the  subject.  When  the  meal  came,  it  was  ill-made 
coffee,  a  worse-cooked  omelette,  a  chicken  stew  and  rice,  and 
the  price  demanded  was  about  that  of  a  first-class  dinner 
at  a  London  restaurant.  But  we  had  had  enough  of  this 
sort  of  thing,  and  had  not  spent  so  long  in  the  country 
without  having  reached  that  point  of  exasperation  at  which 
the  long-suffering  worm  found  his  proverbial  patience  ex- 


ON   THE   SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  191 

hausted.  So  we  placed  a  half  of  the  price  demanded  on  the 
table,  and  givhig  our  hostess  to  understand  that  this  was 
equivalent  to  the  price  in  Merida,  shook  the  dust  of  her 
inhospitable  dwelhng  off  our  feet. 

Riding  horses  proved,  curiously  enough,  unprocurable,  and 
we  had  had  more  than  enough  of  volans,  so  we  determined 
to  make  a  walking  tour  of  our  exploration  of  the  Southern 
Sierras.  Ticul  is  a  town  of  gardens,  and  it  would  be  difficult 
to  imagine  anything  fairer  than  our  tramp  the  next  morning 
through  its  long  straggling  suburbs  of  neat  mestizo  huts, 
each  framed  deep  in  its  setting  of  the  rich  green  of  orange 
tree,  palm  and  laurel,  interspersed  with  the  red  of  roses,  with 
the  scarlet  trumpet-shaped  tulipan  blossom,  and  the  purples, 
pinks,  and  whites  of  the  climbing  convolvuluses.  The  road 
we  followed  was  the  main  road  to  Peto,  broad  enough  and 
dusty  enough  to  deserve  the  title  "  highroad,"  and  rock-strewn 
enough  to  be  thoroughly  Yucatecan.  But  the  country  had 
altered.  We  were  in  a  very  different  Yucatan  from  that 
through  which  for  months  past  we  had  travelled.  Here  was 
no  dead  level  of  dense  forest-land  where  views  were  at  a 
premium,  but  a  wooded  undulating  country  over  which  you 
could  see  for  miles  as  you  slowly  climbed  towards  the  range 
of  limestone  bluffs  shining  white  in  the  sun,  each  tufted  with 
clumps  of  trees,  the  landscape  looking  for  all  the  world  like 
a  piece  of  Aberdeenshire.  On  each  side  the  road  ran  roughly 
built  grey  stone  walls,  and  you  felt  that  you  had  only  to  peer 
over  these  to  see  a  frothing  brown  stream  leaping  down  over 
the  boulders.  But  there  the  delusion  stopped,  for  the  Southern 
Sierras  of  Yucatan  are  as  deadly  dry  as  the  northern  plains  of 
the  Peninsula  ;  and  though  the  climb  was  perhaps  not  more  than 
six  or  seven  hundred  feet,  the  blaze  of  the  sun  made  the  white 
dust  of  the  road  almost  intolerable.  Our  walk  lay  for  twelve 
long  miles  to  the  village  of  Tabi,  where  we  had  been  told  that 
food  would  be  procurable.  Having  started  our  walk  on  the 
not  very  generous  diet  of  black  coffee  and  tortillas,  we  were 
desperately  hungry  by  the  time  we  saw  signs  of  the  village 
ahead  of  us.  But  our  hunger  was  nothing  in  comparison  with 
our  thirst.  It  was  a  five-dollar  one,  and  a  jaded  toper  living 
a  dipsomaniacal  city  life  would  have  probably  made  us  a 
"  sporting  offer  "  of  three  times  that  amount  for  it. 

Our  bodily  needs  led  to  a  most  characteristic  exhibition 
of  the  vivid  contrast  between  the  Indian  and  Yucatecan 
natures.     At  the  very  first  hut  in  the  village  we  sent  our 


192  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Indian  servant  to  ask  for  what  we  needed  most— water.  A 
gentle-looking  Indian  mother,  two  or  three  brown  toddlers 
hanging  on  to  her  huipil,  came  to  the  door,  and  then  smilingly 
disappeared,  to  reappear  in  a  second  with  water  in  a  calabash, 
the  dried  rind  of  a  large  gourd  which  throughout  Yucatan  is 
used  by  the  Indians  as  water-dipper  and  drinking-cup.  Had 
it  been  that  "  draught  of  vintage,  that  hath  been  Cooled  a 
long  age  in  the  deep  delved  earth  "  of  which  John  Keats  so 
eloquently  sings,  the  clear,  cool  limestone  water  "  with  beaded 
bubbles  winking  at  the  brim  "  in  that  earthy-smelling  gourd 
could  not  have  tasted  more  like  nectar.  We  must  have  almost 
drunk  away  the  good  wife's  day's  supply,  for  the  gourd  held 
close  on  a  pint,  and  we  each  drank  three,  and  our  servant 
drank  two.  Yet  when  we  offered  a  few  centavos  in  return  for 
our  splendid  drink,  the  Indian  woman  shook  her  head  and 
would  not  take  them.  We  insisted,  but  she  was  obdurate 
until  we  suggested  that  at  least  she  would  let  us  give  them  to 
the  black-eyed  chiquitos  who  peeped  shyly  at  us  from  behind 
the  shelter  of  her  cotton  robe. 

From  her  hut  we  walked  on  to  the  village  store,  the  usual 
filthy  earth-floored  warehouse  ;  its  stained  wooden  counter 
crowded  with  habanero  and  anise  bottles ;  its  roof  garlanded 
with  strings  of  onions,  green  and  red  peppers,  and  tortillas  ; 
its  floors  littered  with  sacks  of  maize,  rice,  pepper,  and  black 
beans.  Here  presided  a  fat  Yucatecan,  who  to  our  inquiries 
as  to  whether  he  could  prepare  us  a  meal  made  the  reply  which 
with  a  maddening  reiteration  one  hears  aU  over  Yucatan : 
"  No  hay  ;  no  hay  "  ("  There  is  not  ") .  But  we  were  too  hungry 
to  take  "  no  "  for  an  answer,  and  we  urged  that  surely  he  could 
cook  us  some  eggs,  make  coffee,  and  boil  us  some  rice.  At 
first  he  demurred  even  to  this,  but  we  injudiciously  showed 
such  eagerness  that  he  presently  did  retire  into  the  inner  shop, 
whence,  after  a  consultation  with  a  woman,  he  emerged  to 
tell  us  that  eggs,  rice,  and  coffee  could  be  served.  The  man 
looked  such  a  blackguard  that  we  thought  it  only  wise  to  ask 
what  the  price  of  this  sumptuous  meal  would  be.  To  this 
question  at  first  he  would  give  no  answer.  At  last,  with  a 
surly  shrug  of  his  shoulders,  he  said,  "  Quien  sabe  ?  "  ("  Who 
knows  ?  ") 

"Who  knows  ?  "  indeed !  Who  does  not  know  what  eggs,  rice, 
and  cofiee  will  cost  ?  The  impertinent  frankness  of  the  rascal's 
intentions  was  too  much  for  us.  If  he  could  have  only  got  us 
to  have  eaten  the  food,  he  meant  to  charge  us  about  five 


ON   THE   SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  193 

times  its  value.  With  a  curse  at  the  limitless  dishonesty  of 
Yucatecans,  we  left  his  filthy  store,  preferring  hunger  to  such 
a  host.  We  walked  fifty  yards  down  the  village,  and  then, 
as  we  came  to  a  likely  looking  Indian  hut,  we  knocked  at  the 
door  and  asked  the  woman,  who  came  from  the  washing-tray 
to  answer  us,  whether  she  could  give  us  any  food.  With  a 
gentle  apologetic  smile  she  said  she  had  very  little,  but  we  were 
welcome  to  all  that.  She  invited  us  in,  gave  us  the  seats  of 
honour  in  the  hammocks.  In  a  minute  or  two  a  pot  ot  coffee 
was  steaming  on  the  embers,  she  had  made  up  the  fire,  had 
sent  a  child  out  to  the  garden  where  the  hens  were  to  find  an 
egg  or  two,  and  with  rice  and  tortillas  served  us  a  meal  which, 
to  our  sharpened  appetites,  was  as  tasty  as  a  Guildhall  banquet. 
When  we  had  done  and  were  leaving,  with  many  a  shy  smile 
and  gesture  of  distaste  for  charging  anything,  she  asked  .  .  . 
twenty-five  centavos — sixpence  ! 

Here  you  have  in  epitome  the  Indian  and  the  Yucatecan. 
The  Indian  woman  at  the  beginning  of  the  village,  who  had 
toiled  at  dawn  to  bring  from  the  village  well  her  household's 
daily  supply  of  drinking-water,  glad  to  give  all  we  asked  for 
nothing.  In  the  centre  of  the  village  the  great  coarse,  un- 
wieldy Yucatecan  shopman,  the  "  snubnosed  rogue  "  whose 
dirty,  mean  mind  was  centred  upon  the  wretched  gains  of  his 
cheating  life.  And  then  this  kindly  Indian  hostess  who  gave 
us  her  all  and  asked  but  a  pittance  in  return  for  the  clearing 
of  her  larders.  Savages  and  slaves  !  If  we  wrote  ten  thousand 
words  they  would  surely  not  be  so  convincing  as  this  eloquent 
incident  at  Tabi. 

From  Tabi  the  distance  to  the  ruins  of  Labna  is  some 
twelve  miles.  At  Tabi  you  have  reached  the  top  of  the  first 
range  of  those  sierras  which  command  the  vast  valley  lands 
around  Ticul,  stretching  northward  toward  Merida.  The 
road  leads  for  the  first  few  miles  between  luxuriant  hedges 
to  the  hacienda  of  San  Francisco  (where  we  stayed  the  night)  ; 
and  thence  it  plunges  into  a  really  beautiful  wooded,  hilly 
country,  the  thick  foliage  climbing  up  the  sides  of  the  bluffs 
which  range  each  side  of  the  roadway,  rearing  their  bare  lime- 
stone crowns  above  the  trees.  It  is  a  forest  world,  very 
different  from  the  desolate  and  dark  woods  of  the  north-east, 
and  as  the  underwood  crackles  beneath  our  feet,  deer  break 
away  from  the  coverts  at  the  roadsides  and  bound  up  the 
wooded  slopes.  At  the  seventh  mile  from  the  hacienda  a 
ruin  shows  on  a  hill  to  the  right.     It  looks  worth  a  climb, 

13 


194  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

and  with  axe  and  machete  we  make  our  way  to  it.  It  had  been 
a  two-storeyed  building,  but  the  upper  portion  was  in  hopeless 
ruin.  The  lower  storey  consisted  of  six  rooms  entered  by  six 
doorways,  the  front  ornamented  by  a  now  much  broken 
row  of  pilasters  half  rounded,  their  attachment  to  the  building 
being  on  the  flat  side.  Above  these  was  a  second  row  of 
smaller  pilasters  about  a  foot  long,  and  above  them  a  coping 
as  edging  for  the  platform,  once  smooth  stone,  now  hopeless 
earth-tangle  and  debris,  upon  which  the  upper  building  stood. 
Between  the  third  and  fourth  doorway  a  flying  arch  still 
supported  the  remnants  of  a  staircase  some  lo  feet  wide 
which  led  up  to  the  upper  building. 

Two  miles  further  on  through  the  woodland  and  the  country 
opens  out  on  the  right  into  a  large  clearing  locked  in  on  all 
sides  by  high  limestone  hills,  just  the  ideal  site  for  the  fine 
city  Labna  must  have  been.  The  ruins  form  a  scene  of  com- 
plete but  grand  desolation.  The  north  side  of  what  was 
once  the  great  city  square,  now  a  tangle  of  jungle  undergrowth, 
is  occupied  by  the  ruins  of  a  superb  palace.  Standing  on 
a  terrace  400  feet  long  and  150  feet  deep,  the  building  is  of 
such  a  bizarre  shape  that  it  looks  as  if  its  builders  had  been 
playing  a  gigantic  game  of  dominoes  with  stone  and  mortar. 
Beginning  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  building,  for  about  200 
feet  it  faces  south.  At  this  point  the  front  turns  at  right 
angles  and  runs  back  some  90  to  100  feet,  facing  west. 
Another  angle  is  formed  here,  the  building  once  more  facing 
south  for  some  200  feet,  almost  at  the  end  of  which  a  narrow 
block  projects  in  a  line  with  the  first  corner  turning,  forming 
a  three-sided  courtyard,  the  fourth — the  south — side  being 
open.  This  gigantic  building  is  divided  into  a  series  of  low 
narrow  rooms,  the  doors  an  equal  distance  from  one  another, 
and  the  whole  front  alternately  formed  of  flat-hewn  stones 
and  pillars,  the  latter,  like  half  tree-trunks,  mortared  flat  upon 
the  building,  slightly  barrel-shaped  and  never  monolithic : 
many  of  them  broken  into  two  columns  by  two  or  three  small 
rounds  of  stone.  This  curious  fa9ade,  the  like  of  which  we 
had  not  met  with  in  the  north-east,  was  crowned  by  an  entab- 
lature some  3  feet  deep  running  the  whole  length  of  the  build- 
ing, the  architrave  elaborately  carved  in  rectangular  designs 
interspersed  with  rosettes,  leaves,  lozenges,  and  diamonds, 
the  corners  ornamented  with  gaping  alligator  jaws  in  which 
are  carved  human  heads. 

The  upper  storey  of  this  extraordinary  building  was  reached 


ON    THE    SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  195 

by  a  central  staircase  now  in  ruins,  and  stood  far  back  upon 
a  terrace.  All  two-storeyed  Mayan  buildings  have  this  pecu- 
liarity :  the  upper  storey  never  forms  one  sheer  face  of  stone 
with  the  lower  as  in  ordinary  house-building,  but  always  stands 
back  on  a  platform  more  or  less  wide.  Here  at  Labna  this 
platform  was  some  25  feet  wide,  and  had  once  been  stone- 
paved  throughout  its  whole  length.  At  about  the  middle  of 
it  was  a  circular  hole  between  2  and  3  feet  in  diameter.  This 
led  to  a  vault-hke  chamber  about  4  feet  deep  with  parallel 
walls  and  triangular  arched  ceiling,  a  doorless  replica,  in  fact, 
of  the  other  rooms  of  the  palace.  This  subterranean  room 
was  built  in  the  soUd  part  of  the  terrace  which  formed  the  roof 
of  the  first  storey. 

Stephens  mentions  that  the  Indians  of  his  day  were 
very  superstitious  about  the  hole  and  believed  it  haunted. 
This  is  not  surprising,  for  even  to-day,  after  sixty  years' 
further  contact  with  civilisation,  weird  stories  are  asso- 
ciated with  most  of  the  buildings.  There  are  other  of  these 
secret  rooms  with  entrances  from  the  top  both  at  Labna, 
Uxmal,  and  elsewhere.  The  ancient  use  of  these  chuUunes,  as 
the  Mayans  call  them,  has  been  much  discussed,  and  Stephens, 
we  think  quite  rightly,  rejected  the  idea  that  they  were  reser- 
voirs for  the  storing  of  water.  It  is  far  more  probable  that 
they  were  storerooms  for  grain  or  other  eatables,  or  possibly 
treasure-houses  ;  though  we  incline  to  the  behef  that  they 
may  have  been  prisons  ;  a  suggestion  which  we  think  we  are 
the  first  to  advance. 

Standing  at  right  angles  to  the  eastern  end  of  the  palace, 
facing  westward,  is  a  second  building,  one-storeyed,  divided  into 
eleven  rooms.  It  is  a  sohd  structure  in  fair  preservation,  and 
in  singular  contrast  with  the  palace  in  being  almost  entirely 
devoid  of  decoration  or  carving.  But  the  most  remarkable 
building  at  Labna  stands  on  a  mound  about  50  feet  high,  its 
slopes  now  a  mass  of  shrub  and  debris.  It  consists  of  a  two- 
roomed  structure  which,  by  reason  of  the  perpendicular  wall 
that  rises  up  some  30  feet  above  the  roof-level,  is  one  of  the 
most  extraordinary  in  Yucatan.  Most  curious  is  the  effect  of 
the  isolated  position  of  this  wall,  which  towers  above  the 
ruined  rooms  of  the  south  side.  It  is  slotted  with  nar- 
row perpendicular  apertures  like  the  window  openings  so 
often  seen  in  a  Norman  castle  wall.  It  is  elaborately  carved 
with  designs  in  deep  relief,  now  so  ruined  that  it  is  next 
to  impossible,  at  the  distance  at   which  one  is   obliged  to 


196  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

stand  from  the  wall,  to  follow  the  original  scheme  of  orna- 
mentation. Along  the  top  was  once  a  row  of  death's-heads. 
Beneath  were  two  lines  of  human  figures,  of  which  only  arms 
and  legs  now  appear.  Over  what  was  the  centre  doorway 
are  the  remains  of  a  colossal  figure  with  beneath  it  what 
certainly  looked  to  us  like  a  phalhc  emblem.  The  whole  of 
the  wall  still  bears  trace  of  the  colours  with  which  its  extra- 
ordinary carvings  were  once  painted.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that,  Uke  the  Castillo  at  Chichen,  this  building  was  of  a  religious 
nature,  and  it  is  one  more  proof  of  the  extraordinary  versatility 
of  the  ancient  Mayan  architects. 

Right  below  this  mound  to  the  westward  stands  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  the  ruins  at  Labna,  an  arched  gateway,  our 
photograph  of  which  we  reproduce.  This  archway  is  remark- 
able as  being  the  nearest  approach  so  far  discovered  in  Central 
America  to  the  classic  archways  ;  but  as  will  be  seen  by  our 
illustration  it  is  still  distinctly  Mayan  with  its  narrow  roof- 
stone.  Through  this  archway  you  pass  into  what  formed 
once  a  quadrangle.  Each  side  of  the  arch  and  all  round,  door- 
ways lead  into  chambers  12  feet  by  8.  Over  each  doorway 
had  been  a  square  recess  in  which  were  the  relics  of  a  carved 
ornament  which,  as  Stephens  says,  looks  like  the  representation 
of  a  rayed  sun.  Right  and  left  of  this  archway  the  building 
of  which  it  formed  a  grand  entrance  ran  out  for  some  distance, 
and  when  complete  it  must  have  been  a  striking  example  of 
architectural  majesty  and  grace. 

The  distance  as  the  crow  flies  from  Labna  to  Sayil  (our  next 
destination)  is  but  a  few  miles.  But  the  cross-country  journey, 
the  whole  district  studded  with  limestone  hills,  is  an  impossible 
one,  and  thus  we  had  to  return  to  Tabi,  whence  it  is  some  six- 
teen miles,  taking  the  hacienda  of  Santa  Anna  on  the  way. 
In  many  ways  Sayil  is  a  replica  of  Labna,  but  on  a  grander 
scale.  We  should  almost  despair  of  giving  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  majesty  of  what  must  have  been  the  palace  of 
Sayil  if  we  were  not  able  to  reproduce  on  the  plate  opposite 
our  photograph  of  it.  The  building  is  immense,  subhme  in 
its  immensity.  Even  in  its  ruined  state  it  strikes  one  dumb 
with  wonder.  To-day  no  less  than  eighty-seven  rooms  can 
be  counted,  and  there  once  were  probably  upwards  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty.  What  it  must  have  been  like  when  its 
triple  terraces  were  perfect,  and  its  three  columned  storeys, 
carved  and  decorated,  housed  their  ancient  inhabitants,  one 
must  leave  to  the  imagination.     In  the  centre  of  the  building 


ARCHED  GATEWAY,  LABNA. 


i~ 


^^^^  tn^w§  f  i*i- 


THE   PALACE,    SAYIL. 


p.  196] 


ON   THE    SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  197 

was  a  grand  staircase  32  feet  wide  which  ascended  to  the  top 
of  the  structure.  This  staircase  and  the  right-hand  portion  of 
the  building  are  in  hopeless  ruins,  but  enough  remains  to  prove 
the  grandeur  of  the  conception  of  these  wonderful  Indian 
architects  who,  working  without  metals  or  tools  of  precision, 
were  able  to  plan  and  raise  a  pile  which  in  its  majesty  and 
size  is  fitting  to  rank  with  the  architectural  wonders  of  the 
world. 

The  palace  measures  on  the  ground-floor  265  feet  in  frontage 
and  120  feet  in  depth.  The  second  storey  was  220  feet  long  and 
60  feet  deep.  The  third  storey  is  150  feet  long  and  18  feet 
deep.  The  general  design  of  the  fa9ades,  those  of  the  lower 
two  having  been  columnar,  as  seen  clearly  in  the  second,  was 
identical.  The  facade  of  the  upper  terrace  was  plain.  The 
entablatures  of  the  first  and  second  were  elaborately  decorated 
with  carvings,  among  which  the  most  remarkable  is  the  figure 
of  a  man  supporting  himself  on  his  hands  with  his  legs  bent 
wide  apart  at  right  angles  to  his  body  in  an  attitude  which 
certainly  cannot  be  said  to  err  on  the  side  of  deUcacy.  The 
building  is  to  the  rear  much  what  it  is  in  the  front,  though 
the  platforms  of  the  back  terraces  are  narrower.  The  rooms 
vary  in  length  from  23  feet  to  10.  In  the  second  range  to  the 
northward  there  were  ten  doorways  sealed  up  with  masonry 
like  those  we  had  earher  found  in  the  Nunnery  building  at 
Chichen.  Stephens  in  1842  broke  into  these  and  discovered 
that  there  were  ten  rooms,  220  feet  long  altogether,  each  10 
feet  deep,  filled  with  sohd  masses  of  mortar  and  stone.  The 
most  extraordinary  fact  disclosed  by  him  is  that  the  filling 
up  of  the  rooms  must  have  been  done  in  the  course  of  the 
erection  of  the  building  ;  for  as  the  stone  fillings  rose  above 
the  top  of  the  doorways  the  workmen  could  not  have  entered 
the  apartments  through  the  doors  to  complete  the  work  of 
fiUing  in. 

The  only  way  of  explaining  the  means  by  which  these  rooms 
could  have  been  thus  made  solid  is  to  assume  that  the  work 
was  done  from  the  top  before  the  ceilings  of  the  rooms  were 
superimposed,  Stephens  is  at  a  loss  to  explain  this  feature  of 
the  building,  for,  as  he  says,  if  the  filling  up  of  these  ten  rooms 
was  necessary  to  strengthen  the  supports  of  the  third  terrace,  "  it 
would  seem  to  have  been  much  easier  to  erect  a  solid  structure 
at  once,  without  any  division  into  apartments."  We  think 
he  missed  the  simplest  explanation  of  all.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  the  palace  as  first  designed  was  to  be  two-storeyed.    Indeed 


igS  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

this  is  most  probable,  as  this  marvellous  palace  at  Sayil  is  one 
of  the  few  Mayan  buildings  which  have  three  habitable  storeys. 
When  the  building  operations  had  reached  the  second  terrace  the 
cacique,  impressed  with  the  grandeur  of  his  work,  determined 
to  give  the  building  the  added  glory  of  a  third  storey.  But 
the  master  architect  had  his  doubts  as  to  whether  the  founda- 
tion work  would  bear  this  added  weight,  and  to  guard  against 
any  "  settling  "  stayed  the  completion  of  the  rooms  in  the 
rear  and  filled  up  these  ten  before  the  roofs  were  put  on.  Surely 
this  is  a  very  natural  and  very  simple  explanation  of  what 
is  otherwise  inexplicable. 

From  the  terraces  of  the  palace  towards  the  north-west  we 
see  a  high  wooded  hill  surmounted  by  a  building.  The  densest 
wood  covers  the  intervening  space  of  about  a  quarter  of  a 
mile,  and  the  "  going  "  was  of  the  hardest.  But  the  actual 
climb  of  the  hill  was  really  the  most  difficult  job ;  and  slipping 
and  sliding,  with  bleeding  hands  and  torn  clothes  (for  the 
whole  surface  is  spread  with  cactus  and  acacia-like  shrubs 
with  thorns  two  or  three  inches  long  and  a  quarter  of  an  inch 
wide),  we  deserve  to  reach  a  remarkable  building.  We  do  not 
get  our  deserts,  for  it  proves  to  be  a  much  ruined  three -roomed 
house,  the  only  remarkable  feature  being  a  carved  face  of 
life  size  over  the  centre  door,  and  within  the  print  of  the  red 
hand.  From  the  terrace  the  view  into  the  valley  below,  with 
the  mighty  palace  breaking  the  endless  woodland,  evoked  our 
enthusiasm  despite  our  breathlessness. 

At  a  distance  of  about  half  a  mile  to  the  south  of  the  palace 
stand  the  ruins  of  a  building  like  that  described  by  us  at 
Labna.  On  a  mound  an  ordinary  building  40  feet  wide  and 
flat-roofed  is  surmounted  by  a  perpendicular  wall  some  30 
feet  high  and  2  feet  thick.  This  had  the  same  oblong  openings 
like  small  castle  windows  which  we  had  seen  at  Labna,  and 
bore  on  it  the  remnants  of  carved  human  figures  and  varied 
ornamentation.  To  the  S.S.W.  of  this  Stephens  discovered 
yet  another  remarkable  building  117  feet  long,  84  feet  deep, 
and  divided  into  sixteen  rooms.  This  stood  upon  what  he 
describes  as  probably  the  largest  terrace  in  Yucatan,  from 
north  to  south  at  least  1,500  feet  in  length.  With  only  one 
Indian  we  had  to  give  up  the  idea  of  piercing  the  woods  in  this 
direction  ;  but  we  had  seen  enough  to  feel  satisfied  that 
Sayil  was  once  a  city  of  first-rate  importance.  The  immense 
palace  alone  must  have  entailed  a  continuous  labour  of 
thousands  of  workmen  for  some  years. 


ON   THE   SOUTHERN    SIERRAS  19^ 

Three  miles  from  the  hacienda  of  Santa  Anna,  where  we 
stayed,  are  the  ruins  of  Kabah.  There  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  these  ruins  represent  the  remains  of  what  was 
once,  though  probably  only  for  a  short  period,  a  large  and 
powerful  city.  As  far  as  it  is  possible  to  piece  together  from 
traditional  history  the  records  of  this  group  of  cities  of  the 
Southern  Sierras,  it  would  seem  to  be  fairly  certain  that  the 
ruins  we  find  to-day  represent  a  vigorous  recrudescence  of 
building  immediately  after,  and  as  a  result  of,  the  destruction 
of  Mayapan  by  the  confederation  of  caciques.  Doubtless 
Labna,  Sayil,  and  Kabah  existed  as  cities  before  this  great 
victory.  But  just  as  the  downfall  of  the  overlord  of  Mayapan 
was,  we  believe,  the  signal  for  that  temporary  supremacy  of 
the  Itzas,  what  we  might  call  "  the  golden  age  "  of  Chichen, 
so  it  heralded  in  a  period  short  of  a  century  during  which  this 
group  of  Southern  Sierra  cities  enjoyed  an  hitherto  unknown 
prosperity.  We  shall  later  try  to  show  what  exact  connection 
we  believe  existed  between  the  art  of  these  sierra  towns, 
of  fifteenth-century  Chichen,  and  Copan  and  Palenque. 

This  architectural  period,  which  is  perhaps  best  of  all 
represented  in  Kabah,  is  essentially  florid  and,  though  highly 
aciroit  in  its  intricacy,  distinctly  barbaric.  The  most  notable 
feature  at  Kabah,  as  at  most  of  the  ruined  cities  of  Yucatan, 
is  the  huge  mound  or  teocalli  some  80  feet  high,  now  a  moun- 
tain of  loose  stone  rubbish  and  overgrowth,  though  once  stepped 
all  round  and  crowned  by  a  building.  North-eastward  on  a 
terrace  200  feet  wide  by  142  deep  (these  are  Stephens's  measure- 
ments) stands  one  of  the  only  two  buildings  of  Kabah  which 
are  in  any  sort  of  preservation.  The  structure  had  a  frontage 
of  upwards  of  150  feet,  and  its  fagade  is  so  remarkable  for  its 
ornamentation  that  we  reproduce  at  page  318  Stephens's 
drawing,  which  will  give  a  far  better  idea  of  the  design  than 
any  description.  Over  the  doorways  had  been  a  cornice  of 
which  remnants  remain,  and  which,  as  Stephens  says,  "  tried 
by  the  severest  rules  of  art  recognised  among  us,  would  em- 
bellish the  architecture  of  any  known  era."  This  building 
had  been  surmounted  by  a  sort  of  elaborate  stone  combing 
extending  the  full  length  of  the  front  and  reaching  a  height 
of  about  15  feet.  The  interior  was  planned  on  the  usual 
arrangement  of  rooms  found  in  these  Mayan  cities,  each  door- 
way admitting  to  a  front  room  which  in  turn  gives  admission 
to  an  inner  chamber  raised  a  foot  or  two  above  the  ground- 
level  of  the  first  and  reached  by  a  step.     In  the  centre  apart- 


800  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

ment  at  Kabah  this  usually  simple  step  had  been  replaced  by 
two  stone  steps  carved  out  of  a  single  block,  the  lower  step 
being  in  the  form  of  a  scroll.  The  sides  of  the  steps  were  carved, 
as  was  also  the  wall  under  the  doorway. 

To  the  north-east  stands  a  second  palace,  three-storeyed, 
which  must  once  have  been  a  smaller  replica  of  the  majestic 
building  at  Sayil.  Although  hopelessly  ruined  and  silted 
over  with  debris,  the  plan  of  the  building  was  obviously  the 
same  in  all  particulars,  even  to  the  staircase  by  which  ascent 
was  made  to  the  topmost  range  of  apartments.  To  the  west- 
ward of  these  ruins,  Stephens,  in  1842,  found  two  buildings 
erected  on  a  great  terrace  some  800  feet  long  and  100  feet 
wide.  The  first  of  these  houses,  with  a  217-foot  frontage, 
has  seven  doorways,  each  opening  to  single  apartments,  except 
the  centre  one,  which  led  into  two.  The  doorways  had  had 
wooden  lintels,  which  had  disappeared.  The  other  house, 
with  a  143-foot  frontage  and  31  feet  deep,  was  two-storeyed, 
with  a  wide  staircase  in  the  centre  leading  to  the  topmost 
range.  Here  Stephens  discovered  a  wonderful  carved  lintel 
consisting  of  two  beams,  the  outer  one  split  in  two  lengthwise. 
This  constitutes  the  best  example  so  far  discovered  of  Central 
American  wood-carving. 

Tradition  relates  that  this  city  of  Kabah  was  contempo- 
raneous with  the  most  prosperous  days  of  Uxmal  (pronounced 
Ooshmal),  which  city  we  shall  now  shortly  describe.  Between 
the  two  ran,  says  tradition,  a  great  paved  way  of  pure  white 
stone,  serving  as  a  highroad  of  communication  for  the  two 
allied  chiefs,  upon  which  their  messengers  passed  bearing 
letters  written  on  leaves  and  the  bark  of  trees.  Uxmal,  at 
once  the  largest  and  the  best  preserved  of  all  the  ruined  cities 
of  the  Southern  Sierras,  is  between  fifty  and  sixty  miles  to 
the  south-west  of  Merida,  and  stands  on  the  hacienda  of  Don 
Augusto  Peon,  who,  however,  has  not  visited  it,  he  told  us,  more 
than  two  or  three  times  during  the  past  nine  years,  because  of 
its  extreme  unhealthiness  as  a  place  of  residence  owing  to 
the  malaria-breeding  swamps.  The  ruins  cover  about  half 
a  square  mile,  and  consist  of  five  principal  buildings.  These 
are  the  pyramid  temple,  a  Castillo  such  as  that  at  Chichen  ; 
a  quadrangular  edifice  which  archaeologists  have  agreed  to 
call  the  Nunnery  ;  the  House  of  Turtles,  named  from  the 
nature  of  some  of  the  decorations  ;  the  House  of  Pigeons, 
from  the  high,  pierced  combing  which  has  some  likeness  to 
the  front  of  a  long  dovecote ;    and  the  Governor's  Palace. 


ON   THE   SOUTHERN   SIERRAS  201 

The  latter-day  names  of  Mayan  mined  buildings  are  usually 
unsatisfactory,  and  perhaps  those  of  Uxmal  are  the  most 
unsatisfactory  of  any.  Taking  the  pyramid  first,  as  being  at 
once  the  largest  and  the  most  prominent  feature  of  the  ruined 
group,  we  find  it  to  consist  of  a  mound  upwards  of  80  feet 
high,  240  feet  at  the  base  and  160  feet  wide.  The  platform- 
top  of  the  pyramid  measures  about  23  feet  by  80.  The 
pyramid  is  built  of  rough  stone  and  rubble,  and  was  faced 
with  stones  fiat-hewn,  some  of  which  are  still  in  position.  On 
the  east  side  a  stairway,  steeper  than  that  of  Chichen,  ascends 
to  the  top.  The  pyramid  is  crowned  with  a  temple  which 
measures  some  70  feet  by  12  and  is  three-roomed.  This 
Castillo  at  Uxmal  is  distinguished  from  those  at  Chichen  and 
elsewhere  by  a  unique  feature,  namely  the  building-out  of  a 
small  edifice  or  temple  some  20  feet  below  the  level  of  the 
platform  summit  of  the  moimd,  and  having  its  roof  level  with 
it.  This  building  stands  on  a  projecting  platform  of  its  own, 
on  the  west  side  of  the  pyramid,  and  originally  communicated 
with  the  ground  by  a  stairway  24  feet  wide.  It  has  one  door- 
way, and  its  fa9ade  is  more  richly  ornamented  than  that  of 
any  other  building  in  the  group,  notable  being  the  colossal 
"  snouted  mask "  over  the  doorway.  This  rests  upon  a 
pedestal  with  two  jaguar  heads  looking  each  way.  The  door 
lintels  are  sapota  beams,  which  are  to-day  still  in  their  places, 
as  they  were  when  Stephens  visited  the  city  in  1842. 

Separated  from  the  pyramid  by  what  appears  to  have 
been  a  small  courtyard,  is  the  Nunnery,  a  group  of  four  build- 
ings roughly  forming  a  quadrangle,  with  passage-way  at  the 
comers  ;  really  four  distinct  buildings  forming  the  sides  of 
a  large  courtyard.  Three  of  these  edifices  present  a  soUd 
front  externally,  while  that  on  the  south,  279  feet  long,  has 
as  its  centre  a  gateway  spanned  by  an  arch,  10  feet  8  inches 
wide  and  some  15  feet  high.  The  whole  four  buildings,  though 
on  slightly  different  levels,  may  be  roughly  said  to  stand  on 
a  terrace  some  300  feet  square.  All  the  buildings  have  the 
walls  plain  and  the  entablature  elaborately  sculptured.  That 
on  the  east  had  a  centrepiece  above  the  cornice  ;  while  that 
on  the  north  was  adorned  with  a  false  front,  consisting  of  a 
series  of  triangular  gables.  In  the  scheme  of  decoration,  the 
most  notable  features  are  the  so-called  snouted  mask,  which 
we  found  at  Chichen,  and  the  feathered  serpent  design.  Be- 
tween the  Nunnery  and  the  Castillo  Stephens  found  what 
he  called  the  House  of  Birds,  because  of  its  exterior  being 


202  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

ornamented  with  rude  representations  of  feathers  and  birds. 
To  the  south  of  the  Nunnery  quadrangle  still  stand  the  ruined 
walls  of  what  was  a  tennis-court,  such  as  we  have  described 
and  illustrated  at  Chichen.  Still  further  south  stands  the 
Governor's  Palace,  about  300  feet  long,  40  feet  wide,  and  some 
25  feet  high.  It  has  eleven  doorways  in  front  and  one  at 
each  end.  The  interior  is  longitudinally  divided  into  two 
corridors  which  are  in  turn  partitioned  off  into  oblong-shaped 
rooms,  the  chief  of  which,  in  the  centre  of  the  building,  are 
60  feet  long.  There  is  nothing  notable  in  the  actual  building 
of  this  palace,  which  conforms  to  the  designs  common  at 
Chichen  and  elsewhere.  The  rear  of  the  building  is  unbroken 
by  doorways,  but  has  two  arches  towards  each  end  let  into 
the  building.  The  full  length  of  the  entablature  is  elaborately 
carved  in  a  latticework  pattern,  with  ornamentation  super- 
imposed, in  which  the  snouted  mask  is  a  leading  feature.  Over 
the  doorways  the  ordinary  design  is  broken  by  specially  elabor- 
ate carvings  which  usually  take  the  form  of  a  V  shape  bordered 
with  a  lattice  pattern  and  small  projecting  squares.  To  the 
north-west  of  this  palace  is  the  so-called  House  of  Turtles, 
which  gains  its  name  from  the  curious  frieze  on  which  turtles 
are  the  chief  ornamentation.  It  has  a  frontage  of  94  feet 
and  is  about  30  feet  deep.  The  east  and  west  ends  are  much 
ruined,  and  portions  of  the  roof  have  fallen.  It  is  remark- 
able as  entirely  lacking  the  profuse  ornamentation  of  the 
Governor's  Palace  and  the  Nunnery. 

To  the  south-west  of  this  stands  the  building,  in  shape  a 
quadrangle,  to  which  the  absurd  name  of  House  of  Pigeons 
has  been  given  in  allusion  to  a  series  of  nine  gables,  of  which 
eight  are  still  standing,  which  form  a  false  front,  each  gable 
pierced  with  thirty  rectangular  openings  in  seven  horizontal 
rows.  The  whole  building  is  240  feet  long.  In  the  centre  of 
the  front,  which  looks  northward,  is  an  arch  10  feet  wide, 
leading  into  what  was  once  the  courtyard  of  the  building. 
The  other  wings  of  the  quadrangle  are  in  hopeless  ruin.  To 
the  south  of  the  House  of  Pigeons  is  another  small  courtyard 
enclosed  once  on  the  east  and  west  by  buildings,  with  a  mound 
on  the  south  side  up  which  runs  a  well-preserved  stairway. 
At  the  south-west  comer  of  the  Governor's  Palace  is  a  large 
truncated  pyramid  between  60  and  70  feet  high  and  about 
270  feet  at  the  base.  The  top  is  about  70  feet  square,  and 
some  15  feet  from  it  on  the  north  side  is  a  ledge  or  terrace 
which  suggests  that  the  buildings  which  once  stood  on  this 


ON   THE    SOUTHERN   SIERRAS  203 

mound  were  similar  in  design  to  those  which  we  have  de- 
scribed as  still  standing  on  the  mound  called  the  House  of 
the  Dwarf. 

Around  Uxmal  no  excavations  of  any  moment  have  been 
made.  The  owner  of  the  land,  Senor  Don  Augusto  Peon,  very 
courteously  told  us  that  if  we  were  able  to  delay  our  departure 
he  would  grant  us  all  facilities  for  spade-work  among  the  ruins. 
Unfortunately  we  could  not  alter  our  arrangements  ;  but 
undoubtedly  there  is  a  large  field  for  work  here,  which  will 
amply  reward  archaeologists  in  those  days  when  the  "  dog  in 
the  manger  "  policy  of  the  Mexican  "  Jacks  in  office  "  is  a 
thing  of  the  past,  and  intelligent  landowners  such  as  Senor 
Peon  can  assist  students  in  every  way  instead  of  having  their 
hands  fettered  by  absurd  Federal  rules.  But  though  no 
excavation  work  has  been  done,  many  pieces  of  sculpture 
have  been  unearthed  from  a  surface  layer  of  d6bris.  Such 
was  a  column  5  feet  high  tapering  toward  the  base,  where 
it  had  a  diameter  of  20  inches  while  at  the  top  it  measured 
28,  and  ornamented  with  two  rows  of  hieroglyphics.  Another 
sculpture,  found  by  Stephens,  is  a  seat  or  couch  carved 
out  of  a  single  block  of  stone  and  measuring  3  feet  2  inches 
in  length  and  2  feet  in  height.  Its  design  is  a  double-headed 
animal  of  the  jaguar  type,  but  which  Stephens  thought  to 
represent  lynxes.  Its  interest  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  repre- 
sentation of  some  such  ceremonial  seat  was  found  at  Palenque, 
as  we  shall  presently  show. 


CHAPTER    XII 

COPAN   AND   QUIRIGUA 

TIME  did  not  allow  of,  nor  indeed  had  we  ever  contem- 
plated, a  visit  to  Guatemala  and  the  ruins  of  Copan 
and  Quirigua,  or  to  those  scarcely  less  important  ones  in  the 
State  of  Chiapas  and  around  the  Usumacinta  River.  But 
these  are  so  intricately  connected  with  the  problems  of  the 
origin  of  Mayan  civilisation  and  with  those  views  which  we 
venture  to  advance  in  a  later  chapter,  that  we  have  thought 
it  best  to  give  here  some  account  of  the  results  of  the 
exploration  and  excavation  work  among  these  groups. 

The  ruins  of  Copan  are  situated  in  the  frontier  country 
of  Guatemala  and  the  Republic  of  Honduras  on  the  east  bank 
of  the  Copan  River,  which  flows  into  the  Motagua,  finally 
emptying  into  the  Bay  of  Honduras  near  Omoa.  The  name 
Copan  seems  to  be  strictly  that  of  a  district  or  province  ;  but 
it  is  now  used  as  the  title  of  a  village  which  has  sprung  up 
among  the  ruins.  Of  the  history  of  Copan  in  the  century 
immediately  succeeding  the  Spanish  Conquest,  somewhat 
confusing  accounts  are  given.  The  truth  is  that  north-west- 
ward of  the  ruins,  right  in  the  heart  of  Guatemala  proper, 
stands  a  town  "  Coban,"  and  the  past  of  these  two  places  would 
appear  to  have  become  a  good  deal  mixed.  The  Spanish  his- 
torian Francisco  Antonio  Fuentes  y  Guzman  relates  that  a  town 
of  the  name,  which  he  places  in  the  old  province  of  Chiquimula 
de  Sierras,  was  besieged  by  Hemandes  de  Chaves  in  1530.^  A 
desperate  resistance  was  made  by  the  Indians  in  defence  of 
an  entrenchment  formed  of  strong  beams  of  timber,  the  inter- 
stices filled  with  earth,  with  loopholes  for  the  discharge  of 
arrows.  Finally  a  Spanish  horseman  blundered  through  at 
one  weak  spot  and  the  Indians  were  routed.  The  account  of 
this  battle  cannot  very  easily  be  reconciled  with  the  description 

^  Recordacion  Florida — an  MS.  account  of  the  kingdom  of 
Guatemala,  written  in  1690,  and  still  preserved  in  the  city  of 
Guatemala. 

204 


COPAN   AND    QUIRIGUA  205 

of  ruined  Copan  given  by  J.  L.  Stephens  and  Mr.  A.  P.  Mauds- 
lay.  Stephens  describes  it  as  surrounded  by  a  wall  of  cut 
stone  well  laid,  and  of  what  seems  the  incredible  height  of 
a  hundred  feet.  But  allowing  for  any  exaggeration  of  en- 
thusiasm (he  was  there  in  1839,  and  it  was  the  first  Mayan 
ruin  he  had  ever  set  eyes  upon),  it  seems  certain  that  the  old 
Copan  was  a  powerful  and  well-fortified  city,  and  Mr.  Maudslay 
is  probably  right  in  his  suggestion  that  it  had  been  abandoned 
before  the  Spanish  Conquest. 

This  is  certainly  suggested,  if  not  actually  corroborated, 
by  the  only  Spanish  account  of  the  ruins  extant.  Writing  at 
the  time  of  the  Conquest,  Licienciado  Diego  Palacio,  an  officer 
of  the  Audiencia  de  Guatemala,  reports  to  King  Philip  II. 
of  Spain  on  the  8th  March,  1576,  as  follows :  "  I  endeavoured 
with  all  possible  care  to  ascertain  from  the  Indians  through 
the  traditions  derived  from  the  ancients,  what  people  lived 
here  or  what  they  knew  or  had  heard  from  their  ancestors 
concerning  them.  But  they  had  no  books  relating  to  their 
antiquities  nor  do  I  believe  that  in  all  this  district  there  is 
more  than  one,  which  I  possess.  They  say  that  in  the  ancient 
times  there  came  from  Yucatan  a  great  lord  who  built  these 
edifices,  but  that  at  the  end  of  some  years  he  returned  to  his 
native  country,  leaving  them  entirely  deserted.  And  this 
is  what  appeared  to  be  most  likely,  for  tradition  says  that  the 
people  of  Yucatan  in  time  past  conquered  the  provinces  of 
Uyajal,  Lacandon,  Vera  Paz,  Chiquimula,  and  Copan,  and 
it  is  certain  that  the  Apay  language  which  is  spoken  here  is 
current  and  understood  in  Yucatan  and  the  aforesaid  pro- 
vinces. It  also  appears  that  the  designs  of  these  edifices 
are  Uke  those  which  the  Spaniards  first  discovered  in  Yucatan 
and  Tabasco."  It  is  quite  certain  that  Copan  was  in  ruins 
in  1576,  because  Palacio's  letter  continues,  "  On  the  road 
to  the  city  of  San  Pedro,  in  the  first  town  within  the  province 
of  Honduras  called  Copan,  are  certain  ruins  and  vestiges  of 
a  great  population  and  of  superb  edifices  and  splendour  as 
it  would  appear  they  could  never  have  been  built  by  the  natives 
of  that  province." 

The  ruins  are,  as  we  have  said,  on  the  river-bank,  and 
Stephens  concluded,  judging  from  the  dispersal  of  the  stone 
remains  found  throughout  the  woodlands,  that  the  city  had 
a  river  frontage  of  some  two  miles.  On  the  western  bank 
the  only  ruin  is  one  on  the  top  of  a  mountain  2,000  feet  high, 
and  it  seems  probable  that  this  was  an  isolated  shrine,  and 


206  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

that  the  city  did  not  extend  to  the  western  bank.  A  very 
important  feature  of  Copan — one  to  which  we  shall  have  to 
refer  in  a  later  chapter — is  the  absence  of  all  remains  of  palaces 
or  private  buildings  such  as  we  have  described  at  Chichen 
and  Uxmal. 

The  existing  ruins  consist  of  pyramidal  structures  and 
terraces,  but  apparently  without  any  relics  of  buildings  crown- 
ing them.  The  chief  ruin  is  that  which  Stephens  calls  the 
temple.  It  is  an  oblong  enclosure,  the  river-wall  of  which 
is  no  less  than  624  feet  long  and  varies  in  height  from  60 
to  90  feet.  It  is  built  of  cut  stones  from  3  to  6  feet  in 
length  and  i^  broad.  The  other  three  sides  of  this  enclosure 
consist  of  ranges  of  steps  and  pyramidal  structures  varying 
in  height,  measured  on  the  slope,  from  30  to  140  feet.  Near 
the  south-west  comer  of  the  river-waU  Stephens  found  a 
recess  which  he  suggests  was  once  occupied  by  a  colossal 
monument  fronting  the  water.  Beyond  are  the  remains  of 
two  small  p5n:amids  between  which  he  found  traces  of  a  gate- 
way, probably  the  chief  entrance  to  the  city  on  the  riverside. 
The  south  side  of  the  enclosure  has  in  its  eastern  comer  a 
huge  pyramid  120  feet  high  on  the  slope.  To  the  right  of 
this  are  other  terraces  and  pyramids  \\ith  what  was  probably 
a  gateway  into  a  quadrangle  250  feet  square.  Here  Stephens 
found  many  sculptured  stones,  notable  among  these  a  series 
of  gigantic  sculptured  heads  ranged  in  rows  half-way  up  the 
side  of  one  of  the  pyramids.  These  he  took  to  be  death's- 
heads,  but  he  afterwards  reconsidered  this  decision  and  sug- 
gested that  they  were  intended  for  apes'  heads.  For  this 
view  he  found  corroboration  in  the  remains  of  a  colossal  ape 
carved  in  stone  which  lay  faUen  near  by,  and  which  certainly 
seems  to  suggest  that  the  early  occupants  of  Copan  may  have 
reckoned  a  monkey  deity  in  their  mythology.  Remarkable, 
too,  was  the  carving  of  a  head  and  bust  which  appears  to  be 
a  distinct  effort  at  portraiture. 

Facing  eastward,  6  feet  from  the  pyramid  base,  he  found 
the  first  of  those  many  stelae,  the  upright  stones  which  give 
Copan  its  special  interest  in  the  Mayan  controversy.  We 
here  reproduce  his  representation  of  it.  It  is  13  feet  high, 
4  feet  wide,  and  3  feet  deep,  and  is  sculptured  on  all  four  sides 
from  base  to  summit.  It  had  originally  been  coloured,  the 
red  paint  still  adhering  in  places.  Some  8  feet  away  there 
was  a  large  block  of  sculptured  stone,  easily  identifiable  as 
an  altar.     On  it  was  carved,  in  the  front,  a  fuU-length  figure  ; 


COPAN   AND    QUIRIGUA  207 

on  the  sides  are  hieroglyphics.  These  stelae  and  altars  are 
the  peculiar  features  of  the  Copan  ruins.  Nothing  like  them 
has  been  discovered  so  far  in  Yucatan,  and  from  them  it  is 
possible  to  draw  certain  deductions,  as  we  shall  endeavour 
to  do  later.  A  little  further  on,  Stephens  found  another  stela 
of  the  same  size.  The  eastern  side  of  the  enclosure  consists 
of  an  almost  continuous  pyramid-shaped  structure,  broken 
here  and  there  by  isolated  pyramids.  At  right  angles  to  it, 
a  confused  range  of  terraces,  ornamented  with  death's-heads, 
branch  off  into  the  forest.  This  plan  of  building  appears  to 
have  continued  throughout  the  north  side  till  the  river-wall 
was  again  reached. 

Stephens  says  that  he  found  no  entire  pyramid,  each 
mound  consisting  of  at  most  two  or  three  pyramid  sides, 
and  joined,  Siamese-twin  fashion,  to  erections  of  the  same 
kind.  The  outer  side  of  the  pyramidal  mound,  which  thus 
appears  to  have  formed  a  confused  and  rough  continuous 
border  for  a  huge  square,  littered  with  stelae  and  their  altars, 
was  broken  here  and  there  by  stairways,  the  steps  about 
18  inches  square.  These  stairs  had  originally  been  painted. 
The  interior  of  this  enclosed  space  was  occupied  by  a  series 
of  smaller  pyramidal  mounds  and  many  stelae.  One  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  these  latter  is  notable  as  being,  though 
about  the  same  height  as  the  last  shown,  shaped  differently, 
being  broader  at  the  top  than  at  the  base. 

Near  it  is  a  most  remarkable  altar.  Like  the  stelae,  the 
Copan  altars  are  monoUthic.  Each  one,  Stephens  reports, 
appears  to  have  special  reference  to  its  stela,  the  carvings 
differing.  The  four  comers  of  this  monolith  had  been  carved 
into  ball-shaped  feet,  upon  which  the  altar  rested.  The  whole 
was  6  feet  square  and  4  high.  The  top  is  carved  with 
hieroglyphics.  The  four  sides  are  sculptured,  each  with  four 
human  figures  in  bas-relief,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  this 
is  the  only  example  of  such  carving  found  by  Stephens  ;  all 
the  stelae  and  altars  being  in  bold  alto-relief.  The  west  side 
of  the  sculptures  appears  to  be  the  chief  one,  for  there  the 
principal  figures  are  represented  as  addressing  each  other, 
while  on  the  other  sides  the  figures  are  seated  as  if  mere  atten- 
dants at  a  ceremonious  meeting  between  chiefs.  It  will  be 
noticed  in  the  pictures  reproduced  that  the  figures  are  all 
seated  in  a  pecuhar  cross-legged  fashion,  suggestive  of  nothing 
so  much  as  the  attitude  of  the  figures  on  the  Buddhist  stupas. 
E^ch  man  appears  to  sit  on  a  cushion  which  displays  a  glyph, 


2o8  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

probably  his  name  or  office.  Between  the  two  chief  interlo- 
cutors is  carved  a  pair  of  glyphs.  It  is  remarkable,  as  Stephens 
points  out,  that  the  figures  do  not  appear  to  be  armed.  This 
is  quite  the  exception  among  Mayan  monuments,  and  if 
Stephens  is  correct  in  believing  that  there  is  no  representation 
of  weapons  in  any  of  the  ruins  at  Copan, — and  he  is  corroborated 
by  Mr.  Maudslay,  who  made  a  careful  survey, — he  would 
seem  to  be  certainly  justified  in  his  conclusion  that  the  ancient 
inhabitants  were  not  pre-eminently  fighters.  We  shall  show 
that  another  most  important  conclusion  is  possible. 

Close  to  this  altar  Stephens  found  the  ruins  of  two  towers 
at  each  side  of  a  staircase.  Half-way  up  was  a  pit,  lined 
with  stone,  5  feet  square  and  17  deep.  At  the  bottom  was 
an  opening  leading  to  a  chamber  10  feet  long,  5  feet  odd 
wide,  and  4  feet  high.  At  each  end  of  the  chamber  was  a 
niche.  It  was  clearly  a  sepulchral  vault,  and  a  Colonel  Galindo, 
who,  in  1770,  was  the  first  man  to  visit  Copan  with  a  view 
to  archaeological  investigations,  put  this  beyond  dispute  by 
his  discovery  on  the  floor  and  in  the  niches  of  a  number  of 
vases  and  dishes  of  pottery,  more  than  fifty  of  which  he 
declared  were  full  of  human  bones  packed  in  lime.  He  also 
found  several  sharp-edged  and  pointed  knives  of  chaya,  a 
kind  of  flint,  and  a  small  head  carved  in  jade,  its  eyes  nearly 
closed,  the  lower  part  of  the  face  distorted,  and  the  back  sym- 
metrically pierced  with  holes.  There  could  be  no  doubt  as 
to  the  use  of  this  curious  carving.  We  have  ourselves  seen 
in  Yucatan  exquisite  pieces  of  jade  cut  into  face  form  and 
pierced.  These  were  talismanic  plastrons,  worn  by  the  priests 
on  their  breast  much  as  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  wears  the 
City  Badge.  We  shall  suggest  later  that  these  badges  con- 
stitute valuable  evidence  as  to  the  origin  of  the  building  civili- 
sation. In  the  reproduction  of  the  elliptical  tablet  from  the 
palace  at  Palenque  on  p.  217,  just  such  an  amulet  is  seen 
decorating  the  breast  of  the  deity  there  figured.  Colonel 
Galindo  also  found  many  jade  beads  and  large  quantities  of 
periwinkle  shells.  It  might  be  here  worth  mention  that  we 
ourselves  found  in  a  ruin  we  were  examining  on  Cozumel 
island,  a  large  conch  shell  filled  with  charcoal  which  was  actu- 
ally embedded  in  the  outer  wall.  Its  position  forbade  the 
idea  of  it  or  the  charcoal  having  got  there  by  mere  chance. 

Just  above  this  sepulchral  vault  Stephens  found  a  passage- 
way opening  through  the  side  of  the  pyramid,  and  running 
as  far  as  the  river-wall,  where  there  was  an  oblong  opening 


BAS-RSUEF  ON   SOUTH   SIDE   OF  ALTAR   AT   COPAN. 


BAS*RBLI£F   ON   WEST   SIDE   OF   ALTAK   AT  OOPAN. 


14 


210  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

which  has  caused  the  ruins  to  be  locally  known  as  Las  Ventanas 
(the  windows).  The  passage-way  was  just  large  enough  for 
a  man  to  crawl  through  on  his  stomach.  Stephens  looked 
in  vain  for  any  remains  of  buildings.  Juarros/  the  Spanish 
historian  of  Guatemala,  quoting  Fuentes,  declared  that  be- 
tween two  of  the  pyramids  at  Copan  "  was  suspended  a  ham- 
mock of  stone,  containing  two  human  figures,  one  of  each 
sex,  clothed  in  Indian  style.  Astonishment  is  forcibly  excited 
in  viewing  this  structure,  because,  large  as  it  is,  there  is  no 
appearance  of  the  component  parts  being  joined  together  ; 
and  though  entirely  of  one  stone  and  of  an  enormous  weight, 
it  may  be  put  in  motion  by  the  slightest  impulse  of  the  hand." 
For  this  Stephens  also  looked,  but  in  vain,  though  he  found 
an  Indian  who  declared  that  his  grandfather  had  spoken  of 
such  a  reUc.     The  whole  account  sounds  incredible. 

Stephens  discovered  the  stone  quarries  of  Copan,  a  range 
of  hills  some  two  miles  north  from  the  river,  running  east  to 
west.  Out  of  the  side  of  the  hill  the  pre-Columbian  masons 
had  cut  the  materials  for  the  many  stelae,  pyramids,  and  steps 
which  lay  in  the  plain  below.  Stephens  found  many  blocks 
which  had  been  quarried  and  then  rejected  for  some  defects ; 
and  in  one  ravine  leading  towards  the  river  was  a  huge  mono- 
lith, larger  than  any  used  in  the  ruins,  which  had  been  left 
thus  half-way  on  its  journey  to  the  city.  How  such  huge 
masses  of  stone  were  carried  over  even  two  miles  of  woodland 
must  always  remain  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  many  puzzles 
which  the  erection  of  the  cyclopean  Mayan  buildings  presents 
to  baffled  archaeology. 

To  the  south  of  the  enclosure  described,  Stephens  found 
within  terraced  walls  a  group  of  stelae  and  altars.  He  thinks 
that  these  walls  and  their  statues  formed  an  annexe  of  the 
large  enclosure  which  he  is  probably  right  in  calling  the  main 
temple.  The  stelae  were  quite  close  together  and  are  of  such 
interest  both  artistically  and  archaeologically  that  we  cannot 
resist  the  temptation  of  reproducing  some  of  them  from 
Stephens's  excellent  plates.  The  monoliths  averaged  12  feet 
in  height,  and  are  such  masses  of  ingenious  ornamentation  as 
would  arrest  attention  even  if  found  as  relics  of  a  race  the 
civilisation  of  which  was  perfectly  understood.  But  here 
we  have  a  series  of  the  most  intricate  alto-reliefs  undertaken 
with  such  success  that  they  can  be  accurately  copied  after 

^  Domingo  Juarros,  Historia  de  Guatemala,  written  between  1808 
and  1818. 


COPAN   AND   QUIRIGUA  211 

many  centuries.  Stephens  found  at  the  Copan  quarries  blocks 
of  half-prepared  stone  with  hard  flints  embedded  in  them. 
These  blocks  had  been  rejected  by  the  workmen  for  the  very 
excellent  reason  that  their  only  tools  were  flint  chisels,  and 
with  these,  of  course,  they  could  not  shape  smoothly  the  side 
of  the  stone  which  contained  flints.  At  the  back  of  one  of 
the  stelae  Stephens  found  that  flints  had  been  picked  out, 
leaving  holes  which  formed  flaws  in  the  sculpture.  Nothing 
can  more  plainly  indicate  the  limitations  imposed  upon  these 
wonderful  artists  by  the  circumstances  of  their  culture.  They 
were  in  the  Stone  Age,  but  it  was  a  Stone  Age  so  glorified  by 
their  skill  that  it  would  put  to  shame  many  modem  nations 
armed  with  tools  of  precision. 

Mr.  A.  P.  Maudslay  visited  Copan  in  1884,  and  in  the  course 
of  his  investigations  excavated  one  of  the  mounds.  He  cor- 
roborates the  statement  of  Stephens  that  the  monuments  of 
Copan  show  no  traces  of  buildings  such  as  are  found  in  Yuca- 
tan. The  mound  excavated  ran  almost  to  a  point.  On  the 
east  side  were  the  remains  of  steps.  The  upper  part  was 
formed  of  rough  blocks  of  stone  interspersed  with  layers  of 
cement  and  sand.  The  lower  part  of  the  mound  was  formed 
of  stone  and  earth,  and  below  ground-level,  digging  12  feet 
down,  he  found  nothing  but  solid  earth.  Some  6  feet  from 
the  top  of  the  mound  he  came  across  a  vessel  of  pottery  con- 
taining "  a  bead-shaped  piece  of  green  stone,  pierced,  with 
a  diameter  of  2f  inches  ;  six  jade  beads  (the  remains  of  a 
necklace) ;  four  pearls  and  small  rough  figures  cut  out  of 
pearl-oyster  shells  ;  the  jade  whorl  of  a  spindle  ;  some  pieces 
of  carved  pearl  shells.  At  the  bottom  of  the  pot  was  some 
red  powder  and  several  ounces  of  quicksilver." 

A  foot  or  more  above  the  pot  Mr.  Maudslay  found  traces 
of  bones,  but  he  does  not  say  whether  they  were  human  or 
animal.  On  the  groimd-level  were  more  bones  mixed  with 
red  powder  and  sand,  and  a  bead-shaped  stone  3  inches  in 
diameter.  Eight  or  nine  feet  below  groimd-level  he  unearthed 
the  skeleton  of  a  jaguar  beneath  a  layer  of  charcoal.  The 
teeth  and  part  of  the  skeleton  had  been  painted  red.  This 
is  very  curious.  It  is  obvious  that  the  animal  had  not  served 
as  a  burnt  sacrifice,  or  the  bones  would  have  been  charred. 
The  flesh  must  have  been  stripped  off  and  the  painting  done 
before  burial.  Mr.  Maudslay  does  not  explain  this  strange 
find.  Might  it  not  be  that  the  animal  was  sacrificed  on 
the  altar  of  the  neighbouring  stela  as  a  dedicatory  offering 


212  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

.to  the  god  in  whose  honour  the  mound  was  about  to  be 
erected  ;  a  kind  of  consecration  sacrifice  which  had  as  its 
purpose  the  obtaining  of  the  deity's  blessing  on  the  new 
undertaldng.  The  flesh  may  have  been  eaten  or  possibly 
burnt  after  it  had  been  removed  from  the  bones,  the  skeleton 
being  painted  red  before  entombment  as  a  compliment  to 
the  colour  of  the  deity's  own  stela.  Such  burial  of  a  victim 
after  sacrifice  to  obtain  a  blessing  upon  a  new  undertaking  is 
a  very  common  rite  among  savage  peoples.  Thus  the  Dyaks 
and  other  peoples  of  Malaysia  killed  a  slave  and  buried  his 
body  in  the  foundations  of  a  house. 

In  another  small  mound  Mr.  Maudslay  found  fragments  of 
human  bones,  two  small  axes,  and  portions  of  a  jaguar's  skeleton 
and  some  animal  teeth  which  he  suggests  were  dog's,  but  which 
were  probably  jaguar's.  In  yet  another  mound  stones  carved 
into  death's-heads  were  found  and  small  stone  serpents'  heads. 
He  speaks,  too,  of  figures  of  jaguars  carved  on  either  side  of 
the  stairway  of  one  of  the  pyramids,  and  on  the  top  step  "  a 
human  head  in  the  jaws  of  an  animal."  He  believes  that  he 
found  traces  of  glyphs  on  the  facings  of  the  steps ;  and  the 
edges  of  many  of  the  stairways  were  elaborately  carved, 
usually  with  entwining  snakes.  His  reports  make  it  obvious 
that  Stephens  had  not  exaggerated  in  any  degree  the  wonders 
of  Copan.  It  is  indeed  very  doubtful  if  the  Spaniards  at  the 
time  of  the  Conquest  ever  came  across  the  ruins,  though,  as 
Stephens  points  out,  Cortes  in  his  memorable  journey  from 
Mexico  to  Honduras  must  have  passed  within  two  days'  march 
of  the  city.  This  fact  certainly  goes  far  to  prove  that  in 
Cortes's  day  Copan  was  already  deserted,  or  he  would  have 
heard  of  it  and  turned  aside  to  subdue  its  cacique.  But  after 
all,  this  is  but  theorising.  The  Spaniards  may  have  seen 
Copan  in  all  its  wonder  of  carving  and  paint,  and  been  so 
little  impressed  as  to  leave  us  not  a  line  about  it.  For,  as  even 
the  ever  amiable  Stephens  admits,  "  the  conquerors  of  America 
were  illiterate  and  ignorant  adventurers,  eager  in  pursuit  of 
gold  and  blind  to  everything  else." 

The  ruins  of  Quirigua  stand  on  a  level  plain  covered  by 
dense  forest,  a  little  more  than  half  a  mile  from  the  left  bank 
of  the  Motagua  River  near  En  Cuentros,  some  five  miles 
from  the  town  of  Quirigua.  They  consist  of  monuments 
almost  identical  in  shape  and  arrangement  with  those  of 
Copan.  Mr.  Maudslay,  to  whose  patient  and  scholarly 
researches   there   for   several   years   archaeology   is   indebted 


--^ 


FRIEZE   AX    PIEDRAS    NEGRAS, 

USUMACINTA   RIVER. 
(From  a  photograph  by  Herr  Maler.) 


STELA   AT    COPAN,    GUATEMALA, 


p.  212] 


COPAN   AND    QUIRIGUA  213 

for  the  remarkable  detailed  account  contained  in  the  Biologia 
Centrali  Americana,  says  the  site  must  have  always  been 
subject  to  inundations,  and  that  the  level  of  the  ground 
would  appear  to  have  been  raised  since  the  monuments  were 
erected.  He  describes  the  ruins  as  consisting  "  of  numerous 
square  and  oblong  mounds  and  terraces  6  to  40  feet  high." 
Most  of  them  are  faced  with  worked  stone,  and  approached 
by  steps.  In  the  central  space  around  which  they  are  grouped 
stand  thirteen  carved  stelae.  Six  of  these  vary  between  3  and 
5  feet  square,  and  14  to  20  feet  high  out  of  the  ground.  The 
altars  in  front  of  these  stelae  are  described  by  Mr.  Maudslay 
as  oblong  or  rounded  blocks  of  stone  shaped  to  represent 
huge  turtles  or  armadillos  or  some  such  animals.  The  largest 
altar  foimd  by  him  was  shaped  like  a  turtle,  weighed  about 
20  tons,  rested  on  three  slabs,  and  was  roughly  a  cube  of 
8  feet.  He  says  that  the  carvings  on  the  stelae  and  altars 
are  human  heads  or  faces  of  animals,  and  that  plants  or  leaves 
never  occur  though  there  is  a  free  use  of  plumes  and  feathers 
and  occasionally  a  plaited  ribbon.  Mr.  Maudslay' s  account 
supports  in  the  main  Stephens's  short  account  of  the  place. 
The  stelae  the  latter  describes  as  being  twice  or  three  times 
as  high  as  those  at  Copan,  and  always  monoUthic.  One  of 
which  he  gives  a  drawing  is  carved  on  the  front  with  the  figure 
of  a  man,  on  the  back  with  that  of  a  woman.  The  sides  are 
covered  with  hieroglyphics  in  low  relief  just  as  at  Copan. 
Another  stela  stands  26  feet  out  of  the  ground,  and,  as  Stephens 
said,  has  probably  6  or  8  feet  buried.  It  is  notable  as  leaning 
12  feet  2  inches  out  of  the  perpendicular.  The  side  towards 
the  ground  is  ornamented  with  the  figure  of  a  man. 

As  has  been  said,  the  general  type  of  the  ruins  is  identical 
with  those  at  Copan  ;  but  the  monoliths,  though  much  larger, 
are  carved  in  lower  relief,  and  the  ornamentation  is  distinctly 
less  rich  in  design.  Stephens's  supposition  was  that  Quirigua 
is  older  than  Copan.  Mr.  Maudslay  beUeves  that  the  whole 
site  was  once  paved.  He  notes  that  the  carvings  exhibit 
no  weapons.  This,  as  we  have  mentioned,  was  specially 
remarked  by  Stephens  at  Copan.  There  is  much  significance 
in  this  fact,  though  we  scarcely  think  that  it  justifies  the  pre- 
sumption to  which  it  seems  to  have  led  Mr.  Maudslay,  who  in 
a  paper  he  wrote  for  Nature  in  1892,  declares  the  colossal 
figures  on  the  stelae  of  Copan  to  represent  female  deities 
exclusively. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

PALENQUE,   MENCHE,   AND   ON   THE   USUMACINTA 

THE  ruins  of  Palenque  stand  shrouded  in  the  dense  forest 
about  one  hundred  miles  south-east  of  San  Juan  Batista, 
the  capital  town  of  the  State  of  Tabasco.  Their  ancient  name  is 
unknown.  For  years  they  had  been  called  by  the  Spaniardised 
Indians  Casus  de  Piedras  (Houses  of  Stone).  They  lie  about 
eight  miles  from  the  village  of  Palenque,  from  which  they 
take  their  present  generally  accepted  name.  Apart  from  the 
fact  that  they  are,  beyond  dispute,  culturally  the  most  re- 
markable of  all  the  groups  of  ruined  cities  so  far  discovered 
in  Central  America,  they  have  a  very  special  interest  in  having 
been  the  first  "  discovered  "  to  archaeology,  and  the  first  to 
fire  that  train  of  enthusiastic  research  which,  during  the  many 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  first  romantic  accounts  of 
them  penetrated  to  Europe,  has  borne  such  rich  fruit. 

The  Spanish  vandals  had  taken  good  care  to  destroy  on 
the  sites  of  the  newly  founded  cities,  such  as  Merida  and 
Valladolid,  all  vestiges  of  the  ancient  grandeur  of  Mayan 
buildings.  If  anybody  troubled  to  remember  that  in  the 
earliest  years  of  the  Conquest  the  caciques  of  Chichen,  Uxmal 
and  so  on  had  proved  troublesome  foes,  there  was  certainly 
no  one  intelligent  or  energetic  enough  to  bother  himself  with  a 
journey  to  these  dead  cities.  And  so  it  was  that  when  in  1770 
some  stray  Spanish  travellers  stumbled  across  Palenque,  the 
news  of  their  discovery  burst  like  a  bombshell  in  archaeological 
Europe.  It  was  not  until  1776,  however,  that  the  King  of  Spain 
ordered  an  exploration.  On  the  3rd  of  May,  1787,  one  Captain 
Antonio  Del  Rio  was  commissioned  to  investigate  the  romantic 
report  of  the  hidden  city.  In  his  official  account  he  writes 
that  on  his  first  attempt,  owing  to  the  thickness  of  the  woods 
and  a  fog  so  dense  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  men  to  dis- 
tinguish each  other  at  five  paces,  the  principal  building  was 
completely  concealed  from  their  view.     After  a  delay  of  a  few 

214 


itn 


1^ 


Suppoitd  cidei'  Cii>rriiicr 


2l6  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

days,  occupied  by  him  in  collecting  several  score  of  Indians 
to  clear  the  woods,  he  was  enabled  to  make  a  survey.  His 
written  report  for  some  unexplained  reason  was  for  years 
buried  in  the  archives  of  Guatemala,  not  seeing  the  light 
until  1822,  when  the  original  MS.  somehow  fell  into  the  hands 
of  an  English  traveller  who  published  it  in  London  in  that 
year.  Meantime  in  1807,  by  the  order  of  Charles  IV.  of  Spain, 
a  Captain  Dupaix  visited  Palenque.  It  was  not  until  1835, 
twenty-eight  years  after  his  expedition,  that  the  report  of 
Dupaix  was  published  in  Paris  in  four  folio  volumes  at  the 
price  of  eight  hundred  francs. 

Before  Stephens's  investigations  the  wildest  reports  as  to 
the  extent  of  the  ruins  were  current.  These  varied  between 
sixty  miles  and  twenty  miles.  Stephens  once  and  for  all  gave 
the  lie  to  these  fairy  tales,  and  showed  that  the  ruins  did  not 
cover  a  square  mile.  But  this  fact  does  not  weigh  against  the 
assumption,  so  soundly  based  upon  the  grandeur  and  artistic 
glories  of  the  buildings,  that  Palenque  was  once  a  great  and 
powerful  city  ;  for,  as  elsewhere,  the  hundreds  of  dweUings 
which  clustered  around  its  temples  and  palaces  were  houses 
of  perishable  materials  which  long  ago  rotted  away  in  the 
forest.  The  largest  ruin  is  the  palace,  which  stands  on  an 
oblong  mound  40  feet  high,  310  feet  long,  and  260  feet  wide. 
This  gigantic  mound  was  once  faced  entirely  with  stone. 
The  building  on  it  faces  east,  and  has  a  frontage  of  228  feet, 
a  depth  of  180,  and  a  height  of  25.  There  were  fourteen  door- 
ways, each  about  9  feet  wide.  It  is  of  stone  throughout, 
though  the  whole  front  was  once  stuccoed  and  painted.  The 
spaces  between  the  doorways  were  carved  with  bas-reliefs. 
The  chief  doorway  is  approached  by  stone  steps.  Along  the 
cornice  outside,  which  projected  about  a  foot,  holes  had  been 
drilled  through  the  stone,  which  suggests  that  by  their  means 
an  immense  sun-curtain  was  sometimes  lowered  to  cover  the 
fourteen  doorways.  Two  parallel  corridors  run  lengthwise 
on  all  four  sides  of  the  building,  and  it  is  upon  the  corridor 
to  the  east  that  all  fourteen  doors  opened.  These  corridors 
are  about  9  feet  wide.  The  floors  are  of  cement ;  the  waUs 
10  feet  high  and  plastered.  The  inner  walls  are  broken  by 
apertures  about  a  foot  long,  doubtless  for  the  ventilation 
of  the  interior.  Some  of  these  window  slits  were  cross-shaped, 
some  T-shaped. 

From  the  outer  corridor  there  is  but  one  door  leading  to 
the  inner  corridor,  through  which  in  turn  thirty  steps  lead 


PALENQUE    AND   MENCHE 


217 


down  to  a  rectangular  courtyard  80  feet  long  by  70  feet  broad. 
On  each  side  of  these  steps  are  figures  in  bas-relief  9  feet  odd 
high.  On  each  side  of  this  courtyard  the  palace  is  divided 
into  apartments,  the  arrangement  of  which,  intricate  in  the 
extreme,  will  be  seen  from  the  reproduction  we  make  of 
Stephens's  ground-plan.     A  second  flight  of  stairs  leads  out 


ELLIPTICAL   TABLET   IN    PALACE,    PALENQUE. 

westward  through  two  corridors,  and  by  more  steps  to  a  second 
courtyard  80  feet  long  and  30  wide.  So  far  the  arrangements 
of  the  palace  are  much  those  of  other  Mayan  buildings,  though 
on  a  grander  scale.  But  the  peculiar  feature  is  a  tower  on 
the  south  side  of  the  second  court.  At  the  base  it  is  square, 
and  has  three  storeys.  Within  it  is  a  smaller  tower,  separate 
from  the  outer  one  and  containing  a  staircase  also  of  stone  so 
narrow  that  only  a  small  man  could  ascend.    This  staircase 


2i8  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

ends  dead  against  a  stone  ceiling,  from  which  the  last  step  is 
only  six  or  eight  inches.  Such  a  deliberate  cul-de-sac  stair 
is  so  incomprehensible  as  to  defeat  one's  efforts  to  even  suggest 
an  explanation.  The  Chichen  Caracol  stairs,  which  we  ex- 
plored, scarcely  in  our  view  offer  the  same  difficulty,  for  they 
did  appear  to  have  once  opened  on  to  the  platform  of  an 
observatory  turret.  But  Mayan  buildings  are  indeed  full  of 
features  which  are  whimsical  in  the  extreme,  and  suggest  that 
either  the  builders  were  often  demented  caciques  or  that 
buildings  such  as  the  Palenque  palace  represent  the  archi- 
tectural efforts  of  several  generations  of  chiefs,  and  that  the 
later  ones  by  their  additions  rendered  nugatory,  perhaps 
deliberately,  the  designs  of  the  first  builders. 

East  of  the  tower  is  another  building  with  two  corridors, 
one  ornamented  with  pictures  in  stucco,  the  centre  of  its 
wall  bearing  a  curious  elliptical  tablet  here  reproduced  from 
Stephens's  picture.  The  faces  of  the  figures  are  notable  for 
the  pronounced  profile  which  is  found  here,  at  Piedras 
Negras,  and  at  Copan,  but  as  far  as  we  could  see  not  at  all 
at  Chichen  or  at  other  of  the  ruins  in  Yucatan  proper.  This 
tablet  is,  Stephens  says,  the  only  stone  carving  in  the  palace 
except  those  already  mentioned  in  the  courtyard.  Under 
it  once  stood  a  table.  At  the  end  of  the  corridor  containing 
it  an  opening  in  the  floor  leads  by  steps  to  a  series  of  sub- 
terranean apartments,  with  windows  opening  from  them 
above  the  ground,  thus  forming  a  ground-floor  below  the  level 
of  the  corridors.     Here  are  several  more  stone  tables. 

At  the  extreme  south-west  comer  of  the  palace,  connected 
with  it  by  a  subterranean  passage,  is  a  pyramidal  structure, 
which  once  had  stairways  on  all  its  faces.  The  sides  are  very 
steep  and  measure  about  loo  feet  on  the  slope.  The  building 
is  76  feet  long  and  25  deep.  It  has  five  doors  separated 
by  six  piers.  The  front  is  richly  ornamented  with  stucco 
designs  and  hieroglyphics  at  each  end,  ninety-six  glyphs  in 
each  tablet.  The  centre  four  piers  are  carved  with  human 
figures,  two  on  each  side  facing  each  other.  These  are  very 
interesting,  for  they  are,  we  believe,  of  a  design  elsewhere 
unknown  in  Central  America — representing  women  with 
children  in  their  arms.  The  front  corridor  is  7  feet  wide  and 
is  divided  from  the  inner  corridor  by  a  massive  wall  having 
in  it  three  doors.  At  each  side  of  the  centre  door  is  a  tablet 
of  hieroglyphics,  each  13  feet  wide  and  8  high,  and  divided 
into  240  glyphs.     Each  tablet  projects  three  or  four  inches 


PALENQUE    AND    MENCHE  219 

from  the  wall.  In  the  rear  corridor  to  which  these  three  doors 
give  admission  is  another  tablet  4  feet  6  inches  by  3  feet  6 
inches  covered  with  hieroglyphics.  Stephens  says  that  the 
building  was  called  by  the  local  Indians  a  school ;  but  the 
padre  of  Palenque  suggested  that  it  was  the  court-house,  and 
that  these  hieroglyphic  tablets  were  the  tables  of  the  law. 
Who  shall  say  ? 

To  the  east  of  this  Court  of  Justice,  if  such  indeed  it  was, 
is  another  pyramid  134  feet  high,  measured  on  the  slope, 
with  a  building  on  top.  It  has  a  frontage  of  50  feet, 
is  31  deep,  and  has  three  doorways.  The  whole  front  is 
of  stucco  ornamentation  with  hieroglyphics  on  the  piers. 
Divided  into  two  corridors,  this  building  is  probably  the  most 
remarkable  of  all  Mayan  buildings,  by  reason  of  the  altar 
tablet  in  the  iimer  room.  It  was  10  feet  8  inches  wide  and 
6  feet  4  inches  high,  and  consisted  of  three  separate  stones. 
The  middle  one  had  been  removed  before  Stephens's  visit. 
He  found  it  lying  near  the  stream  which  runs  through  the 
group  of  ruins.  The  right-hand  stone  had  been  quite  destroyed. 
Stephens  conjectures,  probably  rightly,  that  it  was  covered 
with  hieroglyphics  like   that   on  the   left. 

This  is  the  famous  "  Table  of  the  Cross,"  the  most  wonderful 
inscription  so  far  discovered  in  the  New  World  ;  and  it  is 
well  to  say  at  once  that  the  title  is  misleading.  The  so-called 
Cross,  it  is  suggested,  is  a  cosmogonical  symbol  of  the  Mayans 
representing  the  tree  of  Ufe  growing  out  of  a  cube-shaped 
world,  having  as  its  base  a  fantastic  head.  This  may  be  so, 
though  we  venture  to  think  it  may  have  quite  another  origin, 
as  we  suggest  later. 

Close  to  this  building  are  two  more  which  are  also 
obviously  temples.  The  three  have  been  named  Temple 
of  the  Cross,  Temple  of  the  Cross  No.  2  (according  to 
Mr.  W.  H.  Holmes),  or  of  the  Fohated  Cross  (according 
to  Mr.  Maudslay),  and  the  Temple  of  the  Sun.  In  each 
is  found  the  same  alleged  cosmic  sign,  the  Tree  of  Life. 
Each  was  doubtless  a  temple.  The  second  two  buildings 
are  almost  identical  in  structure  with  No.  i.  In  the 
Temple  of  the  Sun  is  an  altar-slab  quite  as  remarkable 
as  that  in  the  Temple  of  the  Cross.  It  is  9  feet  wide  and 
8  feet  high,  and  it  is  composed  of  three  separate  stones. 

A  comparison  of  these  extraordinary  carvings  shows  great 
similarity  in  the  pose  and  dress  of  the  figures  ;  but  in  that 
of   the  Temple  of  the  Sun  the   figures  stand  on  crouching 


220 


THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 


fantastic  forms,  and  between  them  is  a  rectangular  table 
curiously  adorned  and  resting  on  two  more  crouching  figures. 
From  this  table  project  two  crossed  lances,  the  point  of  inter- 
section being  hidden 
by  a  grotesque  face 
which  Mayan  stu- 
dents have  agreed  to 
regard  as  a  symbol 
of  the  Sun.  The 
main  figures  would 
seem  to  be  priests, 
or  perhaps  a  priest 
and  his  assistant. 
They  hold  in  their 
hands  what  look  like 
human  figures  for 
sacrifice.  The  key 
to  these  wonderful 
bas-rehefs  lies  in  the 
glyphs.  Professor 
Forstemann  would 
have  us  believe  that 
these  are  but  a  com- 
pilation of  month 
and  day  signs,  that, 
in  fact,  the  tablets 
are  much  like  those 
almanacks  which  a 
country  grocer  pre- 
sents to  his  custo- 
mers, an  attractive 
picture  in  the 
middle,  surrounded 
by  the  days  of  the 
month.  We  do  not 
believe  it,  we  never 
shall  be  able  to  be- 
lieve it ;  and  in  the 
chapter  on  the 
glyphs  we  shall 
attempt  to  show  that  the  Professor  has  been  run  away  with 
by  his  own  theories.  It  is  far  more  likely  that  these  won- 
derful calcuHform  letters  enshrine    a   dedicatory  prayer  to 


BAS-RELIEF    ON   PIER   OF   TEMPLE,   PALENQUE. 


PALENQUE   AND   MENCHE 

the  presiding  deity  of  the   temple,  with  perhaps  a 
scription  of  the  god  and  his  attributes. 
On  the   piers   at 


221 

fuU  de- 


each  side  of  the  tem- 
ple are  stone  tablets 
carved  in  bas-relief 
each  with  a  figure, 
of  which  we  repro- 
duce Stephens's 
drawing.  They  un- 
doubtedly represent 
priests  in  full  cere- 
monial dress.  The 
drawings  form  their 
own  commentary. 
Noteworthy  in  the 
second  is  the  ap- 
pearance of  fishes  in 
the  headdress,  which 
appears  to  be  com- 
posed  of  a  bird 
holding  a  fish.  Some 
fifteen  himdred  feet 
to  the  south  of  these 
temples  is  yet 
another  pyramid 
crowned  by  a  build- 
ing 20  feet  long  and 
80  feet  deep,  which 
Stephens  found  in 
almost  complete 
ruin.  The  most  re- 
markable feature  of 
it  is  a  bas-reUef 
which  once  repre- 
s  e  n  t  e  d  a  couch, 
formed  of  a  two- 
headed  jaguar,  some 
portions  of  the  figure 
once  seated  still  re- 
maining. Of  this  couch  design  we  shall  have  more  to  say  when 
we  come  to  our  arguments  as  to  the  origin  of  Mayan  architecture. 
Near  the  Temple  cf  the  Sun,  Stephens  found  the  only  statue 


BAS-RELIEF   ON   PIER   OF   TEMPLE,    PALENQUE. 


222  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

so  far  discovered  at  Palenque.  It  is  lo  feet  6  inches  high, 
2 feet  6  inches  of  which  is  in  the  ground,  and  the  sides  are  rounded 
while  the  back  is  of  rough  stone.  Many  have  been  the  visitors 
to  Palenque  during  the  sixty-eight  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  Stephens  explored  it,  but  little  or  nothing  has  been  dis- 
covered which  would  justify  a  reversal  of  that  famous  archaeo- 
logist's finding,  viz.  :  that  the  stories  of  the  vast  area  of  the 
ruins  are  mere  fairy  tales,  and  that  in  the  buildings  here  briefly 
described  we  have  the  relics  of  the  only  important  stone 
structures  of  a  once  great  and  powerful  city.  That  it  was 
desolate  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest  is  more  than  likely,  for 
it  is  absolutely  certain  that  Cortes  in  his  march  to  Honduras 
passed  within  less  than  thirty  miles  of  its  site  ;  and  had  it 
then  been  in  that  full  zenith  of  power  which  the  splendour  of 
its  buildings  irresistibly  suggests  it  once  enjoyed,  it  is  in- 
credible that  the  Conqueror  of  Mexico  should  not  have  met 
its  cacique  in  a  pitched  battle. 

Between  seventy  and  eighty  miles  to  the  E.S.E.  of  the  ruins 
of  Palenque,  on  the  south-western  bank  of  the  Usumacinta, 
are  the  ruins  of  Menche.  Some  attempts  have  been  made 
in  recent  years  to  identify  this  with  that  Phantom  City  of 
which  the  cura  of  Santa  Cruz  del  Quiche  gave  Stephens  in 
1839  an  entrancing  account.  He  (the  cura)  when  young 
"  had  with  much  laljour  climbed  to  the  naked  summit  of  the 
sierra  from  which,  at  a  height  of  ten  or  twelve  thousand  feet, 
he  looked  over  an  immense  plain  extending  to  Yucatan  and 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  saw  at  a  great  distance  a  large  city 
spread  over  a  great  space,  and  with  turrets  white  and  glittering 
in  the  sun."  Apart  from  the  fact  that  the  excellent  padre 
had  probably  allowed  his  imagination  to  run  riot,  there  is 
really  no  ground  for  aggrandising  Menche  at  the  expense  of 
the  neighbouring  Palenque,  which  was  once  undoubtedly  the 
larger  city.  This  portion  of  the  Usumacinta  lies  within  the 
tribal  area  of  the  Lacandone  Indians,  who  still  maintain  their 
independence,  and  thus  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  city  which 
is  to-day  represented  by  the  ruins,  was  inhabited  to  a  much 
later  date  than  the  cities  of  Yucatan.  M.  Chamay  visited 
the  ruins  in  1880,  and  endeavoured  to  saddle  them  with  the 
name  "  Lorillard  City,"  in  complimentary  allusion  to  Mr. 
Lorillard,  the  chocolate  millionaire  who  had  defrayed  the 
chief  cost  of  the  French  archaeologist's  tour.  The  honour  of 
their  discovery  really  belongs  to  that  earnest  and  unselfish 
archaeologist  Mr.  Maudslay. 


PALENQUE   AND    MENCHE  223 

The  ruins  consist  of  temples  and  palaces  of  a  construction 
very  similar  to  all  those  buildings  which  are  found  at  Palenque 
and  around  ;  but  Chamay  says  they  are  smaller  and  less 
richly  decorated  than  those  at  Palenque.  They  seem  for 
some  reason  to  have  suffered  severely  from  weather-wear,  for 
all  trace  of  outer  decoration  is  gone.  The  chief  ruin  is  that 
of  a  palace  built  on  a  high  pyramid  in  six  blocks,  forming  a 
rectangle.  Such  is  the  account  M.  Chamay  gives  of  it,  but 
he  states  that  though  the  outline  can  be  traced,  the  whole  of 
the  building  is  now  in  complete  ruin.  About  150  yards  from 
the  river  on  a  pyramid  about  120  feet  high  is  a  building  68 
feet  long  and  about  20  feet  deep,  which  has  three  doorways. 
Its  interior  is  remarkable  only  for  the  fact  that  it  contained 
a  huge  stone  idol  which  is  unique  of  its  kind.  M.  Charnay 
describes  it  as  "  a  figure  sitting  crosslegged,  the  hands  resting 
on  the  knees.  The  attitude  is  placid  and  dignified  like  a 
Buddha  statue  ;  the  face,  now  mutilated,  is  crowned  by  an 
enormous  headdress  of  peculiar  style,  presenting  a  fantastic 
head  with  a  diadem  and  medallion  topped  by  feathers  .  .  . 
the  dress  consists  of  a  rich  cape  embroidered  with  pearls,  a 
medallion  on  each  shoulder  and  in  front,  recalling  Roman 
decorations.  The  same  ornamentation  is  seen  on  the  lower 
part  of  the  body,  having  a  much  larger  medallion  and  fringed 
maxtli.  The  arms  are  covered  with  heavy  bracelets."  Around 
the  idol  M.  Chamay  found  clay  incense-burners  moulded  into 
face  forms  such  as  have  been  unearthed  again  and  again  on 
the  Usumacinta  and  in  Guatemala  and  which  have  proved  to 
be  in  actual  daily  use  to-day  in  the  temple  of  the  Lacandone 
Indians.  The  walls  of  this  temple  M.  Chamay  describes  as 
being  blackened,  doubtless  from  the  smoke  of  offerings.  Above 
the  cornice  of  the  buildings  is  a  stone  lattice-work  14  feet 
high  almost  identical  in  design  with  that  which  we  have 
described  in  our  account  of  the  House  of  the  Pigeons  of  Uxmal. 

Close  to  this  temple  is  a  building  65  feet  long  by  52  deep. 
To  the  south-west  of  this  on  another  pyramid  is  a  second  temple, 
noteworthy  for  the  carved  lintels.  These  represent  scenes 
of  sacrifice  Uke  those  described  at  Palenque  ;  but  there  is 
more  animation  in  the  figures  of  the  second  one,  which  repre- 
sents a  kneehng  priest  passing  a  rope  through  his  tongue, 
while  over  him  stands  another  ecclesiastic,  in  his  hands  the 
crozier-like  wand  of  office  which  again  and  again  occurs  in 
Mayan  ceremonial  carvings.  These  lintels,  which  were  dis- 
covered by  Mr.  Maudslay,  were  by  him  with  infinite  trouble 


224  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

carried  to  the  coast  and  shipped  to  England,  and  are  now 
in  the  British  Museum  among  other  exhibits  of  which  he  has 
been  the  generous  donor. 

This  passing  of  a  rope  through  the  tongue  represents  a 
form  of  worship  of  which  Sahagun  {Historia  General  de  las 
Cosas  de  la  Nueva  Espana)  writes : — "  They  pierced  a  hole  with 
a  sharp  itzli  knife  through  the  middle  of  the  tongue  and  passed 
a  number  of  twigs,  according  to  the  degree  of  devotion  of 
the  performer.  These  twigs  were  sometimes  fastened  the 
one  to  the  other  and  pulled  through  the  tongue  like  a  long 
cord."  Torquemada  also  speaks  of  these  penances  as  occurring 
in  Mexico  :  "  The  priests  of  Quetzalcoatl  provided  themselves 
with  sticks  two  feet  long  and  the  size  of  their  fist,  and  with 
them  they  repaired  to  the  main  temple,  where  they  fasted 
five  days.  Then  carpenters  and  tool-workers  were  brought, 
who  were  required  to  fast  the  same  number  of  days,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  they  were  given  food  within  the  precincts 
of  the  temple.  The  former  worked  the  sticks  to  the  required 
size  while  the  tool-makers  made  knives  with  which  they  cut 
the  priests'  tongues.  More  prayers  followed,  when  all  the 
priests  prepared  for  the  sacrifice,  the  elders  giving  the  example 
by  passing  through  their  tongues  four  or  five  himdred  twigs, 
followed  by  such  among  the  young  who  had  sufficient  courage 
to  imitate  them.  But  the  pain  was  so  sharp  that  few  went 
through  the  whole  number  ;  for  although  the  first  twigs  were 
thinned  out,  they  became  stouter  each  time,  until  they  at- 
tained the  size  of  a  thumb,  sometimes  twice  as  much." 

In  the  neighbourhood  of  Menche  a  further  group  of  ruins, 
those  of  Piedras  Negras,  show  abundant  signs  of  the  high 
level  of  culture  which  is  associated  with  Palenque  and  Menche, 
as  will  be  seen  by  the  photograph  which  we  are  able  to  repro- 
duce through  the  courtesy  of  the  accomplished  and  indefatig- 
able field-worker  and  scholar,  Herr  Teobert  Maler,  to  whom, 
we  believe,  belongs  the  honour  of  being  the  first  to  make 
known  the  extent  and  treasures  of  this  group.  ^'li 

What  is  abundantly  proved  by  his,  Mr.  Maudslay's,  and 
other  students'  researches  in  the  Usumacinta  district  is  that 
the  whole  country  around  is  rich  in  ruins,  and  many  more, 
besides  those  so  far  located,  may  possibly  be  discovered  in 
the  future.  And  here  a  further  puzzle  presents  itself.  Such 
evidence  as  exists  in  the  Spanish  records  seems  to  point  to 
the  fact  that  all  these  cities  were  in  a  deserted,  or  at  any  rate 
a  decadent,  state  on  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards.    The  evidence 


PALENQUE  AND   MENCHE  225 

is  not  by  any  means  conclusive,  as  little  or  no  reliance  can 
be  placed  on  the  Spanish  chroniclers,  who  are  silent  upon  so 
much  else.     But  such  as  it  is,  it  deserves  weighing. 

Granting  for  the  moment,  then,  that  Palenque  and  these 
other  centres  were  ruins  at  the  Conquest,  why  was  this  so  ? 
An  explanation  might  be  found  in  the  supposition  that  the 
militant  Aztecs  had  made  extensive  raids  as  far  south  as 
Honduras,  and  had  proved  themselves  entirely  superior  to 
the  Mayans,  scattering  and  slaughtering  them,  and,  possibly 
after  a  short  occupation,  had  returned  northward,  leaving 
the  conquered  citizens  too  broken  and  fearful  to  attempt 
a  restoration  of  their  grand  centres,  dreading  further  raids. 
Dr.  Gann,  British  Commissioner  at  Corosal,  told  us  he  found 
in  Honduras  wall  paintings  of  undoubted  Aztec  origin ; 
which  discovery  would  seem  to  support  this  view.  It  cer- 
tainly seems  to  us  a  more  reasonable  explanation  than  the 
one  some  students  have  adopted,  viz.  that  the  cities  of  the 
Usumacinta  represent  an  age  of  culture  between  which  and 
that  of  Northern  and  North-Eastem  Yucatan  stretches  a  gap 
of  many  centuries.  Any  Aztec  raids  Honduras-wards  would 
certainly  follow  a  route  well  south  of  Yucatan,  and  through 
the  Usumacinta  country. 

Yet  another  explanation  might  be  that  the  victories  of 
Cortes  had  the  result  of  driving  large  bodies  of  Aztecs  south- 
ward ;  that  these  possessed  themselves  of  many  Mayan  cities  ; 
and  that  later,  on  Cortes  advancing  south,  they  deserted  them 
and  took  to  the  dense  surrounding  woods.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  that  even  if  the  Spanish  conqueror  passed  within 
eight  or  ten  leagues  of  such  a  city  as  Palenque,  and  did  not 
hear  of  its  existence,  it  might  yet  well  be  that  it  was  still 
inhabited,  as  none  of  the  Indians  met  on  the  line  of  march 
would  be  likely  to  volunteer  any  information  to  the  hated 
whites. 


15 


CHAPTER    XIV 

THE   ANCIENT    MAYANS 

THERE  is  no  field  of  inquiry  in  which  the  imagination 
of  students  could  roam  further  or  more  uselessly  than 
in  the  reconstruction  of  the  hfe  of  a  vanished  people  from 
their  ruined  monuments.  In  attempting,  as  we  shall  in  this 
chapter,  to  place  before  the  reader  a  concise  sketch  of  the 
political,  religious,  and  social  life  of  the  Mayans  at  the  time 
of  the  Spanish  invasion  of  Yucatan,  we  cannot  too  strongly 
emphasise  our  conviction  that  the  marvellous  buildings  which 
we  have  described  in  the  preceding  pages  are  not  monuments 
of  a  vanished  people.  The  Mayan  toiler  to-day  in  the  milpas 
or  the  henequen  fields  is,  we  are  convinced,  the  lineal  de- 
scendant of  the  Mayan  architect  who  was  capable  of  creating 
a  Chichen  or  a  Sayil. 

The  history  of  Yucatan  is  the  history  of  Egypt  save  for 
one  fact.  When  Europe  first  interested  itself  in  the  archi- 
tectural wonders  of  the  Land  of  the  Pharaohs  centuries  of 
darkness  had  overwhelmed  the  Copts  and  the  Fellaheen 
and  the  arts  of  their  ancestors  were  entirely  lost  to  them. 
But  when  the  white  man  first  set  foot  in  Yucatan  the  civilisa- 
tion of  her  people  was  an  actual  living  civihsation,  though  the 
key  to  the  origin  of  it  has  yet  to  be  discovered.  The  half- 
century  which  elapsed  between  the  first  discovery  of  the 
Peninsula  and  the  establishment  of  Spanish  authority  sufficed 
to  render  desolate  the  mighty  cities  which  covered  its  surface, 
to  scatter  and  decimate  its  vast  populations,  to  extirpate  and 
suppress  the  native  rehgion,  and  by  the  substitution  of  a 
new  creed,  a  new  polity,  and  a  new  social  organisation  so 
completely  to  ring  down  the  curtain  upon  the  Mayan  past 
that  the  Indian  victims  of  Spanish  brutality  and  bigotry 
seemed  separated  from  their  ancestors  by  a  gulf  which  even 
the  most  remarkable  archaeological  acumen  would  find  it 
hard   to   bridge.     But   though   much   archaeological  acumen 

226 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  227 

has  been  exercised  and  many  writers  have  laboured  to 
aggrandise  the  Ancient  Mayans  at  the  expense  of  their 
descendants,  it  has  really  been  labour  lost.  The  life  which 
the  Mayans  were  found  by  the  Spaniards  to  be  living  was 
probably  in  its  minutest  detail  the  life  which  they  had  led  for 
centuries  before.  And  thus  in  presenting  here  a  short  account 
of  their  civilisation,  pieced  together  from  the  haphazard 
writings  of  those  Spaniards  who  were  not  entirely  absorbed 
in  the  congenial  task  of  massacring  and  destroying,  we  are 
safe  in  assuming  that  we  are  giving  the  reader  a  very  fair 
and  accurate  idea  of  how  the  builders  of  even  the  oldest  ruins 
lived  and  loved  and  died. 

Politically  Yucatan  was  divided  into  a  number  of  pro- 
vinces, each  ruled  by  a  cacique.  These  provinces  at  the  time 
of  the  Spanish  invasion  appear  to  have  numbered  nineteen. 
The  power  of  these  caciques  within  their  own  territory  was 
so  absolute  as  to  amomit  to  a  virtual  monarchy  ;  though 
kingship  in  its  true  constitutional  sense  would  appear  to  have 
never  existed  in  Yucatan.  The  caciqueship  was  hereditary, 
and  passed  from  father  to  son.  Females  appear  to  have  been 
excluded  from  succession.  If  a  cacique  died  leaving  a  son 
who  was  a  minor,  his  eldest  or  most  capable  brother  succeeded  . 
as  cacique,  and  actually  held  the  position  after  the  heir  had 
reached  full  age  ;  the  nephew  being  obhged  to  wait  until  his 
uncle's  death  before  he  attempted  to  claim  his  heritage.  If 
the  cacique  left  no  brother,  the  priests  and  chief  elders  elected 
a  successor  who  held  the  government  for  his  life,  the  rightful 
heir  only  acceding  at  his  death. 

Each  cacique  maintained  a  small  bodyguard  ;  but  the 
army  for  the  defence  of  the  State  was  the  whole  body  of 
citizens  capable  of  bearing  arms.  The  cacique  himself  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  commander-in-chief,  but  delegated 
this  post  to  two  subjects,  one  of  whom  held  his  military  leader- 
ship by  inheritance,  transmitting  it  to  his  son,  and  the  other 
being  elective  every  three  years.  This  latter  official  combined 
with  his  military  duties  certain  sacerdotal  functions,  presiding 
at  the  feast  of  the  War  God,  and  during  his  term  of  office 
leading  a  hermit's  life,  maintaining  complete  chastity  and 
abstaining  from  intoxicating  hquor.  The  weapons  of  the 
soldiers  were  bows  and  arrows  pointed  with  stone  or  fishbone, 
stone  axes,  and  lances,  swords  and  daggers  of  wood  hardened 
by  fire.  They  carried  shields  of  plaited  cane  covered  with 
deer-skin,   and  wore   an  armour  of  thickly   woven   cotton. 


228  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Having  no  horses  and  no  draught  animals  of  any  kind,  each 
soldier  had  to  be  commissariat  waggon  for  himself,  and  this 
difficulty  of  providing  food  for  a  long  campaign  made  the 
wars  short  and  sharp.  Ordinary  captives  were  usually  reduced 
to  the  condition  of  slavery,  but  the  general  or  cacique  who 
was  made  prisoner  was  sacrificed  to  the  War  God  as  a  thank- 
offering. 

The  centre  of  each  town  or  village  was  occupied  by  the 
chief  temple,  around  which  were  built  the  houses  of  the  priests, 
the  palace  of  the  cacique  and  those  of  the  chief  men.  Outside 
this  sacred  pale  lived  the  poorer  people  in  huts  of  the  same 
type  as  those  inhabited  by  the  Mayans  of  to-day.  Close  to 
the  temple  was  ordinarily  the  market-square,  where  stood 
the  town  hall  in  which  all  pubHc  business  and  reunions  of  the 
tribe  took  place,  and  justice  was  administered.  Here  presided 
a  special  functionary  who  ordered  public  festivals  and  cere- 
monies, and  took  the  chair,  so  to  speak,  at  general  meetings 
of  the  people.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  appears  to  have  rejoiced 
in  the  name  of  Hoipop,  which  according  to  D.  G.  Brinton 
means  literally  "  head  of  the  mat,"  because  at  the  tribal 
meetings  when  the  elders  squatted  round  on  the  mats,  the 
Holfop  sat  at  the  end.  He  appears  also  to  have  been  Master 
of  the  Music,  and  to  have  had  in  his  keeping  the  musical 
instruments  of  the  tribe — namely  the  tunkul,  which  seems  to 
have  been  a  small  drum  of  wood,  trumpets  of  conch-shell  and 
flutes  of  cane.  The  tunkul,  which  produced  a  melancholy 
note,  was  used  to  summon  the  people  to  worship,  to  give 
notice  of  dances  and  festive  meetings,  to  call  together  the 
warriors,  and  as  an  alarm  signal  in  case  of  sudden  attack. 
Thus  the  tunkul  was  in  a  special  sense  the  sacred  national 
instrument  of  the  Mayans. 

Justice  was  administered  in  a  summary  manner  by  the 
cacique,  who  personally  heard  plaints  and  disputes  and  gave 
such  judgment  as  he  thought  fit.  In  the  matter  of  damage 
to  property  the  guilty  party  was  made  to  compensate  the 
injured  by  payment  of  his  own  goods.  If  he  had  no  property, 
his  relatives  had  to  pay  for  him.  This  penalty  of  fining  was 
the  usual  punishment  for  accidental  homicide  and  imin- 
tentional  arson  and  in  the  case  of  conjugal  quarrels.  Adultery 
was  regarded  as  a  grave  offence  when  committed  with  a 
married  woman.  Accusation  of  adultery  having  been  notified, 
the  cacique,  accompanied  by  the  tribal  elders,  held  a  court, 
when  with  the  greatest  solemnity,  and  in  the  presence  of 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  229 

the  injured  husband,  the  adulterer  was  tied  hand  and  foot  to 
a  post  of  infamy.  He  was  then  at  the  disposal  of  the  injured 
man.  The  latter  could  pardon  him  if  he  wished,  or  could 
take  his  life  there  and  then  by  smashing  in  his  head  with  a 
stone.  The  woman  in  fault  suffered  no  bodily  punishment, 
but  was  branded  with  infamy  and  usually  repudiated  by  her 
husband.  It  is  obvious  that  much  respect  was  shown  to 
women,  for  the  penalty  of  death  was  meted  out  to  any  man 
who  was  guilty  of  outrage  or  rape,  technical  or  actual.  The 
cacique  always  condemned  the  offender  to  be  stoned,  and  the 
penalty  was  inflicted  by  the  whole  village.  Nobody,  not  even 
the  highest  noble,  appears  to  have  been  able  to  escape  the 
rigour  of  this  law. 

For  murder  the  penalty  was  death,  either  by  order  of  the 
cacique ;  or,  if  the  criminal  escaped,  he  could  be  pursued  by 
the  family  of  his  victim  and  killed  wherever  they  found  him, 
his  crime  thus  making  him  an  outlaw.  In  the  case  of  murder 
by  a  minor,  the  penalty  of  death  was  not  inflicted  nor  could 
the  injured  family  pursue  him.  But  he  became  their  slave 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Unintentional  homicide  was  less 
rigorously  punished.  A  fine  either  in  goods  or  a  slave  was 
usually  the  penalty  imjxjsed.  Other  accidental  injuries,  such 
as  the  immaHcious  firing  of  houses  or  crops,  were  made  good 
by  fining.  In  the  case  of  intentional  arson,  however,  the 
culprit  was  put  to  death  ;  and  the  supreme  penalty  of  the 
law  was  also  inflicted  on  traitors. 

Enslavement  was  the  punishment  of  all  robbers,  who  could 
only  regain  their  liberty  by  restoring  the  stolen  goods  and 
making  good  the  damage.  So  severe  were  the  laws  as  to 
robbery  that  no  excuse  was  found  in  circumstances  of  extreme 
want.  The  man  who  stole  because  he  was  starving  was 
reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  slave  just  the  same  as  the  wanton 
or  violent  robber.  Robbery  and  war  were  the  chief  sources 
of  recruiting  the  ranks  of  the  slaves.  But  if  a  theft  was  com- 
mitted by  a  cacique,  priest,  noble  or  official,  an  exception 
was  made  in  their  favour.  They  did  not  become  slaves,  but 
were  obliged  to  submit  to  a  public  degradation.  The  popular 
assembly  was  summoned,  and  there,  before  the  eyes  of  all  the 
people,  the  culprit  was  branded  on  both  cheeks,  from  chin 
to  forehead,  with  figures  symbolical  of  his  crime,  tatooed  on 
in  paints  with  fishbones. 

There  were  no  regular  prisons  or  houses  of  detention. 
Indeed  they  were  not  needed,  as  justice  was  in  all  cases  sum- 


230  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT  ,  ' 

mary.  Where  possible  the  offender  was  brought  before  the 
cacique  forthwith.  If,  however,  the  arrest  took  place  during 
the  night,  or  the  carrying  out  of  the  sentence  had  to  be  delayed 
for  some  hours,  the  criminal  was  imprisoned  in  an  enclosure 
of  stakes.  If  the  penalty  was  death  it  was  executed  immedi- 
ately, except  in  those  cases  where  the  criminal  was  reserved 
for  sacrifice,  and  then  he  was  kept  caged  up  until  such  day 
as  the  priests  had  ordained.  A  murderer  condemned  to  slavery 
became  the  property  of  one  of  the  chief  men,  if  there  was 
no  kinsman  of  his  victim  to  whom  he  could  become  servant. 

There  was  a  very  marked  differentiation  of  classes  among 
the  Mayans.  There  were  the  nobles,  the  priests,  the  people, 
and  the  slaves.  The  children  of  these  latter  inherited  their 
parents'  status  and  ipso  facto  became  slaves.  A  free  man  who 
married  a  slave  woman  lost  his  freedom.  Thus  were  class 
distinctions  sternly  maintained.  Even  sexual  intercourse 
between  a  free  man  and  a  slave  woman  was  severely  punished 
on  the  first  offence,  and,  if  repeated,  the  man  lost  his  liberty 
and  became  a  slave  to  the  owner  of  the  girl.  There  appears 
to  have  been  a  regular  slave-market  in  each  large  Mayan  city. 
The  Spanish  chroniclers  endeavour  to  denigrate  this  system 
of  servitude,  declaring  it  to  be  a  cruel  debasement  of  human 
beings  to  the  position  of  beasts  of  burden.  But  though  all 
slavery  is  detestable,  there  seems  to  have  been  little  or  no 
cruelty  in  the  system  in  vogue  among  the  Mayans,  and  it  is 
quite  obvious  that  it  was  untainted  by  that  basest  of  all 
advantages  which  are  taken  of  a  slave  class — namely,  the 
using  of  them  for  immoral  purposes.  Spanish  writers  should 
recollect,  in  view  of  this  very  black  page  of  their  own  history, 
a  homely  little  proverb  which  begins  "  those  who  live  in 
glass  houses." 

As  has  been  said,  the  Mayan  city  had  as  its  centre  an  open 
space  where  stood  the  temple  and  the  chief  houses.  Thence 
branched  off  paths  (they  were  not  roads)  connecting  this 
central  plaza  with  the  houses  of  the  nobles  and  middle  class, 
the  outlying  suburbs  of  the  city  being  occupied  by  the  poor 
and  the  slaves.  The  richer  people  lived  in  stone  houses,  but 
those  able  to  afford  these  were  always  few,  and  the  average 
Mayan  city  consisted  of  huts  built  just  as  they  are  to-day  by 
the  modern  Mayans  ;  palm-thatched,  oval-shaped  enclosures 
of  stakes  bound  together  by  lianas  and  sometimes  plastered 
over  with  earth.  The  huts  were  of  various  sizes  and  shapes. 
The  majority  were  oval,  some  were  nearly  roimd  with  a  dia- 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  231 

meter  of  twenty-five  feet,  while  a  very  few  were  rectangular. 
They  were  often  divided  into  two  apartments,  a  sleeping  and  a 
living  room.  There  was  no  attempt  at  or  need  for  foundation, 
the  natural  earth  forming  the  flooring,  as  it  does  in  the  huts 
to-day.  E^ch  hut  stood  in  its  own  garden,  in  which  were 
cultivated  plum-trees,  the  mamey  and  the  sapota  for  their 
fruits,  and  other  trees  and  shrubs,  possibly  a  little  cotton  and 
henequen,  and  such  flowering  plants  and  sweet-scented  herbs 
as  wormwood,  sweet  basil,  white  and  violet  irises,  and  a 
small  white  flower,  much  like  the  English  jasmine  and  strongly 
perfumed,  which  one  sees  growing  ever3rwhere  in  the  woock 
of  Yucatan  to-day.  Outside  each  city  were  the  clearings 
devoted  to  agriculture,  the  chief  products  being  maize,  frijoles 
or  black  beans,  a  kind  of  pumpkin,  sweet  potatoes,  cotton, 
and  maize  of  different  kinds.  When  the  harvest  was  abundant 
it  was  stored  in  granaries  as  a  reserve  for  bad  years. 

The  Mayans  had  few  domestic  animals.  They  kept 
turke}^,  which  were  indigenous  to  Central  America,  and  they 
probably  early  domesticated  the  wild  pig  or  peccary.  They 
had  a  type  of  dog  which  one  chronicler  declares  was  incapable 
of  barking,  though  an  excellent  hunter.  These  dogs  were 
often  fattened  to  form  a  dish  at  the  feasts,  being  regarded  as 
a  great  delicacy.  The  women  and  children  appear  to  have 
made  pets  of  the  small  Yucatecan  racoon,  the  coati  or  pisotl, 
as  the  Indians  call  it,  and  birds  were  tamed  and  kept. 

The  Mayan  family,  irrespective  of  sex  and  age,  all  slept  in 
that  portion  of  the  hut  that  was  set  aside  as  a  sleeping  apart- 
ment. They  slept  on  beds  of  rushes  loosely  strewn  or  woven 
into  mats.  The  hammock  was  unknown  in  Yucatan  until 
the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards.  It  is  a  very  common  mistake 
to  beUeve  that  the  hammock  was  indigenous  to  Yucatan. 
Columbus  is  the  first  to  mention  the  hammock,  and  he  found 
it  among  the  West  Indians.  It  is  said  to  have  originated  in 
San  Domingo  ;  but  whether  this  is  so  or  not,  it  is  quite  certain 
that  the  Mayans  did  not  sleep  in  hammocks  until  the  Spaniards 
introduced  the  custom.  These  Mayan  rush  beds  were  some- 
times raised  from  the  ground  on  a  sort  of  rough  table  made  of 
sticks  bound  together  and  supported  on  four  legs.  In  the 
poorer  huts  this  is  quite  a  common  form  of  bedstead  to-day. 
As  bed-clothes  they  had  cloaks  of  cotton  of  varying  degrees 
of  thickness  according  to  the  wealth  of  the  family. 

The  farm  lands  belonging  to  the  city  were  cultivated  by 
the  people  in  common.     A  special  portion  of  these  public 


232  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

lands  was  set  apart  each  year  for  the  support  of  the  cacique 
and  his  family,  and  it  was  his  subjects'  duty  to  cultivate  and 
reap  his  crops  and  carry  the  harvest  to  his  granaries.  A  like 
apportionment  of  land  was  made  to  the  highest  nobles  and 
functionaries  of  the  State.  Himting  grounds  were  also  allotted 
to  the  cacique  and  his  chief  nobles,  and  anybody  trespassing 
on  these  was  punished.  The  Mayans  were  great  hunters, 
going  out  in  large  parties  into  the  woods  after  attending  at 
the  temple  and  praying  for  good  sport  from  the  gods  of  the 
woodland.  The  quarry  were  the  several  birds  of  the  pheasant 
family  which  haunt  the  Yucatecan  woods,  the  marvellously 
beautiful  ocellated  turkey  and  other  members  of  the  galli- 
naceous  family,  deer,  rabbits,  the  wild  pig  and,  last  but  not 
least,  the  jaguar.  A  tithe  of  the  "  bag  "  was  presented  to 
the  caciques.  Of  fisheries,  where  available,  the  cacique  and 
his  nobles  also  got  the  pick.  Fish  were  abundant,  as  they  are 
to-day,  along  the  whole  coast  of  the  Peninsula,  and  the  Mayans 
caught  them  with  nets  or,  when  the  water  was  low,  by  shooting 
them  with  arrows.  The  fish  were  dried  in  the  sun,  and  thus 
kept  for  many  days,  and  carried  twenty  or  thirty  leagues  into 
the  interior.  The  Mayans  also  hunted  the  shark,  manatee, 
and  the  turtle.  The  manatee  they  hunted  with  harpoons, 
wading  out  into  the  estuaries  and  following  it  when  wounded 
in  their  canoes.  It  was  valued  for  the  sake  of  its  fat  as  well 
as  its  flesh.  Before  starting  out  to  fish  they  made  supplication 
for  good  luck  in  one  of  the  temples  which  it  was  the  custom 
to  build  for  this  purpose  on  the  beach.  Those  caciques  who 
held  territories  on  the  coast  obtained  salt  from  the  saline 
lagoons,  which  are  found  in  many  places  on  the  coast  of  Yu- 
catan. At  the  end  of  the  dry  season,  when  these  marshes  were 
nearly  waterless  and  it  was  possible  to  cross  them  on  foot, 
expeditions  were  made  for  the  collection  of  the  salt  which 
formed  a  crystal  crust  on  the  mud. 

Thus  it  is  obvious  the  condition  of  the  ancient  Mayans 
was  far  from  being  an  unhappy  one.  They  had  plenty  to 
eat  and  they  had  not  to  labour  much  to  obtain  that  plenty. 
The  race  was  what  it  is  to-day,  healthy  and  strong  and  free 
of  disease.  The  men  were  fine  examples  of  muscular  develop- 
ment, and  the  women  were  often  quite  beautiful,  even  accord- 
ing to  a  European  standard,  and  were  certainly  in  youth 
objects  of  grace  and  sweetness.  But  the  Mayans  did  not 
leave  well  alone,  and  were  in  many  ways  the  victims  of  cruel 
fashion  or  foolish  superstition.     Thus  it  was  regarded  as  a 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  233 

mark  of  the  highest  rank  for  girls  to  be  cross-eyed,  and  Mayan 
mothers  cut  their  daughters'  hair  on  their  foreheads  so  as  to 
hang  down  over  the  eyes  and  make  them  squint.  The  heads 
of  children  of  high  rank  were  often  flattened,  and  huge  ear- 
rings of  stone  were  worn  ;  while  the  septum  of  the  nose  was 
pierced  and  adorned  with  a  spindle  of  stone  or  a  feather. 
The  habit,  too,  which  the  Mayan  woman  still  has  of  carrying 
her  youngster  astride  her  hip  tended  to  create  bow-leggedness. 

The  Mayans  wore  no  hair  on  the  face  at  all.  They  daubed 
their  cheeks  with  a  red  earth  on  occasions  of  ceremony  and 
when  going  into  battle  ;  at  which  time  their  only  ordinary 
garment  the  wide  loin-cloth  (Mayan  Utt)  was  supplemented,  at 
any  rate  in  the  case  of  caciques  and  nobles,  by  long  square- 
cut  cotton  mantles  fastened  on  the  shoulders.  Mr.  E.  Thomp- 
son has  given  a  good  picture  of  a  chief  dressed  for  festival  or 
war.  He  writes  :  "  A  penanche  or  frontlet  encircled  his  fore- 
head, above  it  waved  plumes,  while  from  beneath  it  on  each 
side  the  long  black  hair  fell  until  nearly  touching  his  shoulders. 
Perforating  the  lobes  of  his  ears  were  huge  round  ear  orna- 
ments, generally  of  the  precious  green-jade  stone.  His  arms 
were  bare  save  for  armlets  and  bracelets.  A  richly  worked 
loin-cloth  protected  his  loins,  while  his  legs  were  covered  with 
leggings  of  quilted  cotton  elaborately  worked  and  coloured, 
fastened  in  front  by  a  series  of  rosette-Uke  ornaments.  Two- 
thonged  sandals  protected  his  feet,  while  the  mace  of  authority, 
the  acatl  or  dart  sUng,  and  the  terrible  two-handed  serrated 
sword  of  obsidian  or  flint  were  his  weapons.  His  large  round 
shield  was  painted  with  his  heraldic  devices."  The  dress  of 
the  priests  was  still  more  elaborate,  and  in  their  case  at  least 
was  substituted  for  the  cotton  r.obe  a  deer  or  jaguar  skin. 
This  is  clearly  seen  in  the  plates  reproduced  from  Stephens 
on  pages  220  and  221. 

The  women  wore  the  chemise-like  garment  which  all  Mayan 
women  wear  to-day,  with  the  headcloth  we  have  previously 
described.  They  smeared  and  scented  their  bodies  with  an 
unguent  made  of  a  favourite  resin,  and  their  long  hair, 
parted  in  the  middle,  was  worn  either  in  a  thick  plait  or 
loose  over  the  shoulders.  The  Mayan  woman  was  as  much 
the  head  of  the  domestic  household  as  members  of  her  sex  are 
in  civiUsed  countries.  The  chief  food  of  the  Mayans  was 
always  maize,  with  which  the  housewife  made  atole,  a  thick 
porridge  mixed  with  honey,  still  a  favourite  dish  of  the  Indians 
to-day.     This  and  the  tortillas  formed  the  morning  meal. 


234  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

Sometimes  a  mess  of  ground  black  beans  was  added.  There 
were  two  meals  a  day,  the  chief  one  being  the  evening  meal, 
when  venison,  birds,  and  fresh  or  salted  fish  figured  in  the 
menu  of  the  richer  people.  The  family  did  not  eat  together  : 
the  men  having  their  meal  separately  from  the  women.  The 
Mayan  drinks  consisted  of  a  maize-water  called  keyem  and 
fermented  liquors  made  of  honey,  fruits,  and  pepper. 

Marriage  was  an  important  matter  among  the  Mayans, 
and  the  arrangements  were  left  in  the  hands  of  the  parents ; 
sometimes  in  the  hands  of  a  professional  matchmaker.  A 
union  having  been  arranged,  the  day  of  the  ceremony  was 
made  the  occasion  for  a  great  feast.  There  seems  to  have 
been  a  great  deal  of  poetry  about  the  Mayan  nature,  for  flowers 
figured  largely  in  the  decorations  and  the  Mayan  word  for 
marriage  is  poetical  and  allegorical  in  the  extreme  :  Kamnicte 
— literally,  "the  reception  of  the  flower  of  May."  The  actual 
ceremony  appears  to  have  been  nothing  more  than  the  formal 
handing  over  of  the  bride  to  the  groom  by  the  priest,  after  he 
had  satisfied  himself  that  they  knew  their  own  minds.  There- 
after there  were  feasting  and  dancing,  lasting  well  into  the 
evening,  generally  ending  in  the  fermented  drink  being  far 
too  much  for  the  men  of  the  party,  who  had  to  be  helped  home 
to  their  huts  by  their  wives  and  daughters. 

After  the  wedding  the  bridegroom  lived  with  his  father- 
in-law  for  five  or  six  years,  working  for  him.  This  appears 
to  have  been  a  custom  very  strictly  enforced,  the  son-in- 
law  thus  repaying  with  his  personal  service  the  honour 
granted  him  by  being  admitted  to  the  family.  If  the 
young  husband  refused  this  personal  service,  he  was 
ignominiously  expelled  from  the  house  and  the  marriage 
was  dissolved.  The  marriages  of  widows  and  widowers  were 
very  simple  affairs.  There  was  no  feast,  comparatively  no 
religious  ceremony,  and  no  gathering  of  relatives.  A  widow 
had  merely  to  receive  a  widower  in  her  house  and  give  him 
food,  for  a  legal  marriage  to  be  constituted.  The  visiting 
lists  of  old  and  undesirable  widows  must  have  been  very 
limited  indeed.  One  wonders  whether  the  elder  Mr.  Weller 
could  have  found  language  to  express  his  views  at  this  terrible 
facility.  No  doubt  the  Mayan  "  mere  man  "  learnt,  as  did  the 
old  coach-driver,  to  "  beware  of  widows."  But  every  cloud  has 
its  silver  lining,  and  if  the  Mayan  became  the  property  of  a 
neighbouring  widow  by  simply  taking  a  cup  of  afternoon  tea 
with  her,  he  had  really  only  himself  to  blame  if  he  found 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  235 

his  fetters  irksome.     For  it  appears  that  he  had  only  got  to 
walk  off  in  order  to  dissolve  a  union  of  which  he  had  wearied. 

Little  or  no  trouble  was  taken  over  the  education  of 
children,  who,  girls  and  boys,  ran  wild  and  naked  till  about 
their  fifth  year.  At  puberty  the  sexes  were  strictly  separated  ; 
the  girls  being  confined  to  their  parents'  huts,  and  the  boys 
going  to  live  in  a  large  house  where  all  the  unmarried  youths 
dwelt  in  common  like  soldiers  in  a  barracks.  Here  they  Uved 
a  hfe  of  their  own,  having  Uttle  or  nothing  to  do  with  the 
older  men.  As  soon  as  a  youth  married,  he  took  equal  rank 
with  the  fathers  of  families  ;  but  it  was  only  nominally  equal, 
for  a  characteristic  of  the  Mayans  was  the  great  respect  shown 
to  age,  and  the  younger  men  were  expected  to  defer  to  their 
elders  in  all  matters.  The  youths  living  in  the  communal 
house  were  distinguished  by  their  face-paintings  of  black,  in 
contrast  with  the  red  used  by  the  grown  men.  Men  bore 
their  parents'  name  ;  but  the  maids  appear  to  have  been, 
until  married,  practically  nameless.  For  they  were  not 
entitled  to  bear  their  fathers'  names.  In  the  matter  of  in- 
heritance, too,  they  were  passed  over,  the  property  of  their 
father,  in  default  of  his  leaving  sons,  passing  to  their  uncles 
or  nearest  male  relatives. 

Indeed  no  relationship  was  traced  through  the  female 
line  ;  and  while  marriage  was  prohibited  with  any  relative 
who  bore  the  paternal  name,  there  were  no  restrictions  as  to 
unions  with  those  on  the  mother's  side.  Marriage  was  for- 
bidden between  a  man  and  his  sister-in-law,  the  widow  of  his 
brother,  his  step-mother,  and  the  sisters-in-law,  aunts,  and 
sisters  of  his  mother.  Though  polygamy  was  apparently 
never  approved  by  the  Mayans,  they  repudiated  their  wives 
on  the  most  frivolous  pretexts,  forming  a  series  of  new  unions. 
This  fickleness  seems  to  have  developed  a  shrewishness  among 
Mayan  women,  who,  usually  docile  and  obedient,  avenged  them- 
selves upon  their  husbands  for  the  least  infidelity  by  personal 
violence,  scratching  their  faces  and  tearing  out  their  hair. 
After  all,  women  are  much  of  a  muchness  all  over  the  world  ; 
but,  apart  from  these  very  natural  outbursts  of  passion,  the 
Mayan  women  really  appear  to  have  been  model  wives  and 
mothers  and  to  have  devoted  considerably  more  attention  to  the 
education  of  the  girls  than  the  fathers  did  to  that  of  the  boys. 
Mayan  women  do  not  appear  to  have  taken  part  in  the  sacri- 
fices at  the  temples,  whether  of  human  victims  or  otherwise. 
The  ceremonial  dances,  too,  which  appear  to  have  often  been 


236  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

of  an  indecent  character,  were  never  attended  by  them.  In- 
deed it  appears  that  the  sexes  rarely  if  ever  danced  together. 
The  Mayans  were  passionately  fond  of  dancing,  which  was 
of  two  kinds  :  the  sacred  dances  at  the  temples  and  the  public 
dances  on  occasions  of  festival  or  ceremony.  One  dance  only, 
called  Naual,  there  was  which  was  danced  by  men  and  women 
together.  Otherwise  the  women  danced  separately  from  the 
men,  as  they  ate  separately  from  them.  The  Mayan  women 
indeed  seem  to  have  borne  themselves  modestly  in  every 
way,  and  drunkenness,  the  greatest  vice  of  the  men,  was 
almost  unknown  among  them. 

The  Mayans  appear  to  have  been,  at  any  rate  in  later 
times,  great  traders.  Cortes  encountered  them  trading  round 
the  coasts  of  the  West  Indian  Islands,  and  they  certainly 
trafficked  with  the  tribes  of  Mexico  and  Honduras.  Trade  was 
carried  on  principally  by  means  of  barter.  Their  exports 
were  salt,  cotton  cloth,  dried  fish,  and  resins  ;  their  imports, 
the  cocoa  bean,  stone  beads,  nephrite  stone  from  the  highlands 
of  Mexico,  mineral  paints  and  obsidian,  of  which  they  made 
knives  or  lance-heads.  From  Guatemala,  too,  they  got  jade. 
There  may  have  been  also  a  traffic  in  slaves.  There  was  no 
standard  coinage,  for  metals  were  almost  unknown  ;  but  more 
as  counters  than  as  money  were  used  the  cocoa  bean,  tiny 
beUs,  and  rattles  of  copper  and  stone  beads.  Sales  do  not 
appear  to  have  been  evidenced  by  writings.  One  chronicler 
states  that  a  bargain,  especially  in  the  sale  of  slaves,  was 
clinched  by  the  two  contracting  parties  drinking  together 
before  two  witnesses.  The  Mayans  had  many  industries, 
chief  among  them  being  those  of  the  potters  and  the  carpenters. 
The  men  who  carved  the  wooden,  or  moulded  the  pottery 
idols,  lived  under  severe  rules,  passing  a  hermit's  life  in  a  hut 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  city,  dividing  their  time  between 
work  and  fasting.  To  them  once  a  day  food  was  taken  by  a 
member  of  their  family,  but  it  was  a  strictly  vegetable  diet, 
as  all  flesh  was  forbidden  them.  A  continuous  vigil  was 
enjoined  upon  them  until  each  special  task  was  complete. 

The  Mayan  doctors  and  medicine  men  treated  their  patients 
with  herbs  and  enchantments.  They  were  in  much  request 
at  confinements  and  in  cases  of  snake-bite.  They  were  also 
employed  to  divine  the  future  and  to  pronounce  a  benediction 
on  new  houses. 

As  we  have  said,  land  was  held  to  be  common  property. 
There  was  no  strictly  proprietary  right.     Its  products  belonged 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  237 

in  each  case  to  the  first  occupier  ;  but  occupation  itself  gave 
but  a  precarious  right  which  lasted  only  for  the  full  term  of  one 
agricultural  season.  After  harvest  the  land  reverted  to  pubUc 
use.  This  community  of  land  was  traditional  among  the 
Mayans,  and  was  doubtless  largely  due  to  the  character  of  the 
soil,  which  did  not  permit  of  its  being  cultivated  more  than 
two  years  running.  After  two  harvests  it  was  exhausted,  and 
had  to  be  allowed  to  he  fallow.  The  lands  of  the  caciques 
and  nobles  were  cultivated  by  slaves  ;  but  the  common  people 
helped  each  other  in  their  sowings  and  harvestings. 

The  Mayans  were  always — they  are  to-day — a  laughter- 
loving  race.  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  make  one 
of  them  laugh,  and  their  merriment  is  from  the  heart,  an 
ingenuous  joy  in  hfe,  a  child's  glee.  And  thus  every  important 
event  in  their  lives,  public  or  private,  was  taken  advantage 
of  as  a  fitting  occasion  for  a  dance  or  a  feast.  Public  feasts 
were  given  by  the  caciques  or  in  their  honour.  At  these 
banquets  much  ceremony  was  observed,  and,  when  departing, 
each  guest  was  presented  with  a  beautifully  woven  cotton 
mantle,  a  carved  wooden  stool,  and  a  painted  drinking-gourd. 
These  guest-gifts  were  as  much  an  essential  part  of  the  enter- 
tainment as  they  are  in  Japan,  where  indeed  they  take  an  even 
more  practical  and  rather  embarrassing  form :  for  the  happy 
diner  on  getting  into  his  rickshaw  may  as  Ukely  as  not  find 
a  raw  fish  wrapped  in  tissue  paper  or  a  dainty  Satsuma  bowl 
filled  with  lily  bulbs  packed  away  there  for  his  delectation 
during  his  journey  homeward. 

At  the  Mayan  feasts  rude  mummeries  were  often  presented 
to  amuse  the  banqueters.  These  as  often  as  not  took  the 
form  of  crude  mystery  plays,  and  were  of  course  supplemented 
by  the  music  of  the  tunkul  and  reed  flutes.  Dancing  was  what 
the  Mayans  liked  best  ;  even  to-day  they  will  dance  from 
sunrise  to  sundown  if  they  get  the  chance.  There  were  set 
dances  assigned  for  every  ceremony,  public  or  private,  in  the 
Mayan  city.  The  two  chief  dances  were  the  dance  of  canes 
(Mayan  lotnche)  and  the  dance  of  flags.  The  first  was  a  dance 
by  four  youths  painted  black  from  head  to  foot,  and  adorned 
with  feathers  and  garlands.  It  lasted  all  day,  with  short 
intervals  for  drinking  and  eating.  In  the  dance  of  banners 
several  himdreds  took  part. 

The  Mayans  had  no  cemeteries.  They  buried  their  dead 
or  burned  them  ;  but  they  had  no  common  burial  grounds. 
Corpses  were  usually  buried  inside  the  huts,  which  were  there- 


238  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

after  taboo  and  abandoned.  This  was  the  custom  for  the 
ordinary  citizen ;  the  chiefs  and  the  priests  were  buried  in 
sepulchral  mounds  such  as  we  have  before  described.  In 
cases  of  cremation  the  ashes  were  collected,  placed  in  urns  of 
clay  or  wood,  buried,  and  small  mounds  erected  over  them. 
Sometimes,  in  the  case  of  the  very  great,  the  urn  formed  the 
nucleus  for  a  temple  which  was  built  over  it.  Sometimes, 
instead  of  urns  pottery  figures  were  made  and  the  ashes  de- 
posited in  these,  which  were  then  placed  in  the  temples.  Some- 
times, before  burning,  the  scalp  of  the  defunct  was  stripped 
off ;  part  of  the  body  was  burnt  and  part  buried,  the  ashes 
being  put  in  an  image  of  wood  through  the  top  of  the  head, 
which  had  been  left  open  for  the  purpose,  the  image  being 
then  completed  by  the  placing  of  the  scalp  on  it  as  a  cover. 

The  Mayans  appear  to  have  believed  death  to  be  caused 
by  evil  spirits,  and  if  the  medicine  men  with  their  herbs  and 
their  charms  could  do  nothing,  the  afflicted  relatives  showed 
their  grief  by  sitting  round  in  silence  awaiting  the  fatal  moment, 
convinced  that  the  sick  man  was  about  to  be  taken  possession 
of  by  a  devil.  Mourning  lasted  for  many  days  and  nights 
and  took  the  form  of  wailings  and  groanings.  The  hut  was 
usually  abandoned,  the  ground  around  being  left  uncultivated 
for  many  years  as  a  sign  of  mourning.  In  cases  of  burial  the 
corpse  was  shrouded  and  the  mouth  was  filled  with  ground 
maize,  and  with  it  in  a  vessel  were  placed,  as  a  provision  for 
the  needs  of  the  dead  in  the  next  life,  a  supply  of  the  small 
stones  or  beans  which  served  as  money.  There  were  usually 
added  some  objects  indicative  of  the  rank  or  occupation  of 
the  deceased  :  with  the  priests  sacred  books,  with  the  medicine 
man  his  stone  charms,  and  so  on. 

The  Mayans  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
and  in  future  punishment  and  reward.  Their  heaven  was  a 
happy  hunting  ground  where  life  was  a  continual  round 
of  pleasure.  The  chief  characteristics  of  their  hell  were 
perpetual  hunger  and  cold.  Over  this  lower  world  they 
imagined  a  sovereign-devil  ruled,  whom  they  called  Hun 
Ahau.  The  Mayans  were  essentially  polytheistic,  and  they 
worshipped  many  gods  and  goddesses,  each  with  different 
attributes,  the  idols  of  which,  made  of  stone,  wood  or  pottery, 
were  adored  in  the  temples.  There  were  also  family  gods 
which  had  their  place  in  the  houses,  and  which  were  be- 
queathed as  heirlooms  by  the  fathers  to  their  sons. 

Despite  these  many  deities,  the  Mayans  seem  to  have 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  239 

retained  a  belief  in  an  abstract  Supreme  Being  whom  they 
called  Hundb  Ku,  "  The  One  Divine."  He  was  regarded  as 
omnipotent  and  was  represented  by  no  idol.  To  him  was 
attributed  the  creation  of  the  world  and  of  all  living  things ; 
and  he  had  a  son,  Hun  Itzamna,  "  Dew  of  the  morning,"  a 
Solar  deity,  dwelling  in  the  Eastern  sky.  He  was  alleged  to 
be  the  inventor  of  the  Mayan  alphabet.  A  lesser  god.  Cum 
Ahau,  thought  by  some  writers  to  have  been  the  tapir  deity, 
appears  to  have  been  much  confused,  if  not  actually  identified, 
with  Itzamna.  Waldeck,  in  his  Voyage  pittoresque  dans 
V  Yucatan  (1838),  says  he  recognised  the  tapir  snout  on  various 
masks  and  statues  at  Palenque,  and  adds  that  he  found  the 
animal  still  venerated  by  the  Indians.  Landa  says  the  tapir 
was  only  found  on  the  western  shore  of  Yucatan  near  the 
Bay  of  Campeachy.  The  myth  of  the  tapir  would  thus  seem 
to  have  been  imported  from  Tzental  territory,  Chiapas  and 
Tabasco.  D.  G.  Brinton  beUeves  the  tapir  came  to  be  a 
symbol  of  the  Solar  deity  Itzamna,  despite  its  dull  swamp- 
loving  ways,  through  an  ikonomatic  method  of  writing.  The 
Maya  for  tapir  is  tzitnin,  and  thus,  due  to  a  similarity  of  sound 
with  i-tzamna,  the  animal  was  selected  as  the  god's  symbol. 
It  looks  as  if  Dr.  Brinton  were  confusing  cause  and  effect 
here. 

The  principal  minor  deities  were  the  gods  of  War,  Poetry, 
Music,  and  Trade  ;  the  goddesses  of  Painting,  Medicine,  Vir- 
ginity, and  Weaving.  The  Mayans  believed  that  the  earth  was 
held  in  position  by  four  great  forces  whose  homes  were  situated 
in  the  four  points  of  the  compass.  These  forces  were  wor- 
shipped as  controllers  of  the  winds  and  as  storm  gods.  There 
was  also  a  god  of  Agriculture,  Chac.  He  was  believed  to  have 
hved  on  the  earth  as  a  giant.  Mayan  mythology  was  much 
affected,  too,  by  ancestor  worship,  the  chief  legendary  hero 
being  Cuculcan  (Cocol  Chan),  "  feather^  serpent,"  who,  it 
is  possible,  may  be  identified  with  the  Mexican  Quetzacoatl. 
In  addition  to  these  many  gods  in  common,  the  tribes  had 
gods  peculiar  to  themselves.  Thus  at  Campeachy  a  god  of 
Vengeance,  Kinch  Ahau  Haban,  was  worshipped  with  human 
sacrifice  ;  and  at  Cozumel  Tel  Cuzaan,  whose  idol  had  the 
figure  of  a  man,  the  legs  representing  the  wings  of  a  swallow, 
and  Hulneb,  who  was  represented  with  an  arrow  in  his  hand, 
were  deities  peculiar  to  that  island. 

The  Mayan  priests  were  greatly  feared.  Their  influence 
was  profound,  as  is  not  surprising  when  one  recollects  that 


240  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

they  monopolised  all  learning  in  a  race  which  was  practically 
ilhterate.  The  most  popular  and  the  most  venerated  of 
these  priests  were  the  Chilans,  exorcisers  of  spirits  and  diviners 
of  the  future.  With  them  were  associated  lower  orders  known 
as  Chaques  and  Nacomes.  The  former  were  four  old  men 
annually  elected  to  an  office  which  was  equivalent  to  the 
Christian  sacristan.  The  latter  acted  as  the  assistants  at  the 
sacrifice.  The  gods  were  worshipped  by  fastings,  by  vigils, 
by  continence,  by  the  burning  of  copal  and  the  offerings  of 
flowers  and  scented  herbs,  and,  of  course,  by  sacrifice.  Sacri- 
fices were  generally  of  animals.  Self-mutilation,  the  piercing 
of  ears  and  lips,  the  lacerating  of  tongues  and  other  self- 
inflicted  tortures,  formed  part  of  the  ritual.  During  sacrifices 
women  and  girls  were  excluded  from  the  temples.  In  each 
temple  were  two  stones  of  sacrifice,  one  in  the  holy  of  holies 
and  one  in  the  vestibule.  The  solemnities  surrounding  human 
sacrifice  were  extraordinarily  elaborate. 

The  year  of  the  Mayans  began  on  the  i6th  of  July,  when  the 
principal  feast,  that  of  the  New  Year,  was  celebrated,  preceded 
by  a  period  of  fasting  which  varied  in  length  in  diflerent 
locahties.  The  whole  population  took  part  in  this  festival, 
which  was  in  the  nature  of  a  public  holiday.  On  the  22nd  of 
August  were  celebrated  the  feasts  of  the  priests.  In  every 
Mayan  festival  a  functionary  was  elected  who  presided  over  the 
ceremonies  other  than  those  of  the  temples,  and  who  provided 
the  banquets.  This  official  was  elected  annually.  Following 
immediately  after  the  feasts  of  the  priests  was  kept  the  feast  of 
the  medicine  men.  On  the  ist  of  September  the  feast  of  hunters 
occurred,  and  on  the  12th  that  of  fishers.  On  the  4th  of  October 
was  the  feast  of  bees,  with  which  was  associated  no  kind  of 
sacrifice  ;  the  occasion  being  evidently  one  of  Mayan  "  sweet- 
ness and  light."  The  ist  of  November  and  the  following  five 
days  were  dedicated  to  the  festival  of  Cuculcan  and  the 
memorialising  of  the  legendary  origin  of  the  Mayan  race.  This 
festival  appears  to  have  been  only  local. 

In  December  there  were  three  feasts — one  in  honour  of 
all  the  goddesses,  a  sort  of  All  Saints'  Day  ;  one  a  flower 
festival ;  and  one  a  dedication  of  idols.  At  the  first  the 
custom  was  for  everything  to  be  painted  green,  from  the 
service-book  of  the  priest  to  the  housewife's  distaff  and 
the  agricultural  implements  of  the  men.  The  lads  and  lasses 
took  a  special  part  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  day,  being  collected 
in  the  temple,  when  the  priest  gave  each  child  nine  playful 


THE   ANCIENT   MAYANS  241 

blows  on  each  joint,  praying  that  the  goddesses  might  grant 
them  dexterity  and  success  in  all  they  undertook  in  after-life. 
During  January  the  Chaques  or  priests'  assistants  had  their 
special  day,  which  was  also  the  occasion  for  the  medicine 
men  to  give  their  chief  prognostications,  for  the  repair  of 
the  temples,  and  for  the  writing  of  the  mural  inscriptions 
recounting  the  chief  events  of  the  past  year.  In  February 
the  hunters  had  another  celebration,  but  this  time  a  fast,  not 
a  feast,  when  offerings  were  made  by  them  of  the  beasLs  and 
birds  that  they  had  hunted.  Festivals  of  agriculture  were 
celebrated  in  April  and  May,  the  chief  features  of  these  harvest 
thanksgivings  being  the  offerings  of  the  first-fruits  of  the 
crops.  The  last  feast  of  the  Mayan  year  was  that  of  the 
War-God,  Pacumchac,  which  was  kept  in  the  month  of 
May  or  June.  This  was  celebrated  always  in  the  capital 
city  of  a  caciqueship.  There  were  five  days  and  five  nights 
of  preparation  ;  and  then  sacrifices  to  the  God,  followed  by 
orgies  of  eating  and  drinking  which  were  continued  without 
much  cessation  until  the  New  Year,  a  period  of  nearly  two 
months.  Thus  it  is  not  surprising  to  learn  that  none  but  the 
richest  men  in  a  province  could  afford  to  be  elected  to  the 
very  onerous  post  of  "  patron  of  the  ceremonies,"  who  had 
to  foot  the  bills  for  these  gargantuan  feeds. 


16 


CHAPTER    XV 

WHO   WERE   THE   MAYANS  ? 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  last  chapter  we  stated  it  as  our 
conviction  that  the  marvellous  buildings  which  we  have 
described  are  not  monuments  of  a  vanished  race.  The  Mayans 
who  to-day  inhabit  Yucatan,  Chiapas,  Tabasco,  Guatemala, 
the  Hondurases,  and  sporadically  Southern  Mexico,  are  un- 
doubtedly the  lineal  descendants  of  the  building  Mayans. 

Who,  then,  were  these  Mayans  ? 

Either  they  were  totally  unrelated  to  the  peoples  on  each 
side  of  them  inhabiting  North  and  South  America  (from 
whom  they  were  so  strangely  differentiated  by  their  astonishing 
skill  as  architects)  and  invaded  Central  America,  bringing 
with  them  from  their  cradle-land  a  knowledge  of  building  ;  or 
they  were  akin  to  all  the  other  tribes  of  American  aborigines, 
and  derived  their  building  capacities  from  outside  sources. 
We  believe  that  the  latter  is  the  truth  ;  and  in  this  chapter 
we  shall  endeavour  to  show  what  their  affinities  with  the 
other  peoples  of  America  were,  following  this  up  by  an  inquiry 
into  the  question  of  the  origin  of  their  architecture. 

In  the  comparison  we  drew  in  the  last  chapter  between 
Egypt  and  Yucatan,  we  dwelt  on  the  fact  that,  while  in  the 
former  the  students  of  history  and  archaeology  found  a  land 
which  for  centuries  had  been  overwhelmed  with  an  intellectual 
darkness  so  complete  that  the  people  had  forgotten  they  had 
ever  had  a  civilisation,  in  Yucatan  an  actual  living  civilisation 
was  found  by  the  Spaniards.  But  the  impenetrable  darkness 
which  shrouded  Egypt's  past  proved  really  a  blessing  to 
those  who  set  to  work  to  piece  together  the  ancient  national 
life.  Once  the  key  to  the  mystery  was  discovered  in  the 
Rosetta  Stone,  students  could  go  steadily  ahead,  undistracted 
by  the  will-o'-the-wisps  of  legend  and  tradition.  Not  so  in 
Central  America,  where  every  earnest  inquirer,  whether  he 

242 


WHO   WERE   THE   MAYANS?  243 

would  or  not,  has  found  himself  befogged  by  a  m5n:iad  historical 
fairy  tales. 

The  majority  of  those  who  have  striven  to  throw  light  on 
the  Mayan  problem  have  been  about  as  successful  as  the  boy 
who  tried  to  find  the  end  of  the  rainbow  by  walking  towards 
where  it  seemed  to  rest  on  the  hillside.  It  was  a  long  journey 
they  had  before  them,  and  they  did  not  bother  to  think,  but 
rushed  into  Dame  History's  stable  and  vaulted  on  to  the 
back  of  the  horse  Tradition.  He  is  certainly  a  most  attractive 
mount :  a  superb  animal,  yet  quiet  to  ride  and  drive.  Just, 
in  fact,  the  easy-going,  well-fed,  showy  park  hack,  from  the 
well-worn  saddle  of  which  the  most  inexpert  rider  need  fear 
no  falls.  There  is  a  raw,  nasty-tempered  creature  in  the  next 
stall,  but  nearly  every  one  has  fought  shy  of  him.  This  is 
the  horse  Facts,  as  hard  as  his  name,  with  a  mouth  like  iron, 
and  the  very  devil  in  his  rolUng  eye. 

Just  like  the  park  hack  he  is.  Tradition  has  ambled  with 
its  riders  up  the  row  and  down  the  row,  and  carried  them 
nowhere.  We  will  try  to  saddle  Facts  and  see  where  he  will 
take  us. 

The  horse  Tradition  has  been  taught  one  trick.  He  takes 
the  low  Toltec  fence  like  a  practised  hunter  ;  and  his  delighted 
riders  put  him  at  it  again  and  again,  never  tiring  of  taking 
their  turn  at  clearing  it  on  the  back  of  their  noble  mount. 

"  Toltec  "  has  become  the  password,  the  shibboleth  which 
admits  one  to  the  freemasonry  of  Mayan  archaeology.  Without 
it  you  are  a  lost  soul,  a  heretic  fit  only  for  the  rack  and  stake 
of  the  archaeological  Inquisitors.  Ajnong  the  good  people 
who  worry  round  the  Mayan  problem,  this  Toltec  rubbish 
has  become  a  veritable  bogy.  We  are  now  going  to  do  our 
best  to  "  lay  "  this  spook  once  and  for  all. 

But  first,  what  is  the  Toltec  theory,  to  which  whosoever 
will  attain  archaeological  Nirvana  must  subscribe  his 
*'  Credo  "  ? 

The  Toltecs  are  a  people  who  dropped  from  the  clouds  into 
Mexico  at  or  about  the  seventh  century  of  our  era,  bringing 
with  them  building  specifications,  and,  being  mysteriously 
possessed  of  a  high  civihsation,  dotted  Mexico  and  the  nearer 
parts  of  Central  America  with  marvellous  palaces  and  temples. 
Tradition  has  it  that  they  came  to  Mexico  (no  one  bothers  to 
say  whence)  in  648  and  founded  the  city  of  Tula,  supposed 
to  be  identical  (in  site  at  least)  with  the  present  town  of  that 
name,  about  forty  miles  to  the  north  of  Mexico  City.    They 


244  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

flourished  for  many  centuries,  increasing  and  spreading  over 
the  whole  of  Mexico,  numbering  at  the  height  of  their  pros- 
perity some  four  or  five  miUions.  Through  famine,  pestilences, 
and  wars  waged  on  them  by  other  nations  of  the  north  they 
gradually  diminished  and  were  finally  driven  down  into 
Chiapas,  Guatemala,  and  Yucatan.  During  this  enforced 
emigration  they  are  supposed  to  have  built  the  city  of  Palenque 
and  those  on  the  Usumacinta  in  Tabasco  ;  the  many  buildings 
found  in  Western  Guatemala  and  Southern  Yucatan.  Finally 
they  reached  Chichen  Itza,  whence  they  later  migrated  down 
the  eastern  coast  of  Yucatan  to  Copan  and  Quirigua  in  Eastern 
Guatemala. 

A  minor  controversy  has  raged  around  the  question  of 
the  site  of  their  cradle  city,  Tula.  Some  theorists  have  held 
that  it  was  somewhere  on  the  coast  :  they  generously  give 
you  the  whole  eastern  seaboard  of  Mexico  from  which  to 
choose.  One  of  the  enthusiastic  Tulaites,  deeming  it  well  to 
hedge,  suggests  three  possible  sites,  one  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
another  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  a  third  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  of  Guatemala,  south  of  Honduras.  Toltec  bogy  or 
not,  this  egregious  theoriser  has  at  least  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  with  three  sites  so  far  apart  he  cannot  very 
well  help  being  on  the  right  coast. 

The  plain  truth  is,  as  we  wrote  earlier,  that  this  Toltec 
theory  represents  a  myth  bred  of  a  confusion  of  historical 
facts  which,  if  critically  examined,  flatly  contradict  it.  In 
his  Myths  of  the  New  World  (1868),  the  late  D.  G.  Brinton, 
than  whom  no  one  has  given  a  more  wholehearted  and  en- 
lightened attention  to  the  problem,  writes  :  "  The  story  of 
Tula  and  its  inhabitants  the  Toltecs,  so  currently  related  in 
ancient  Mexican  history,  is  a  myth  and  not  history."  In 
a  paper  entitled  "  Were  the  Toltecs  an  Historical  Nationality  ?  " 
read  before  the  Philosophical  Society  of  America  on  the  2nd  of 
September,  1887,  provoked  by  a  monograph  written  by  M. 
Desire  Charnay  to  defend  the  theory,  he  wrote  :  "  As  a  trans- 
lation of  this  work  has  been  recently  published  in  this  country, 
it  appears  to  me  the  more  needful  that  the  baseless  character 
of  the  Toltec  legend  be  distinctly  stated.  .  .  .  What  Troy 
was  to  the  Grecian  poets  the  fall  of  Tula  (the  Toltec  capital) 
was  to  the  singers  and  story-tellers  of  the  Anahuac,  an  in- 
exhaustible field  of  imagination  for  glorification  and  lamenta- 
tion. .  .  .  Let  it  be  understood  hereafter  that  whoever  uses 
these  names  in  an  historic  sense  betrays   an   ignorance    of 


WHO   WERE   THE   MAYANS?  245 

the  subject  he  handles,  which,  were  it  in  the  better-known 
field  of  Aryan  or  Egyptian  lore,  would  convict  him  of  not 
meriting  the  name  of  a  scholar."  ^ 

The  shortest  way  of  dealing  with  this  farrago  of  myth  is 
to  take  the  war  at  once  into  the  enemy's  camp.  Let  us  take 
the  point  upon  which  all  the  Toltec  enthusiasts  agree,  namely 
that  the  Toltecs  came  "  from  the  north."  Now  let  us  look 
at  this  vague  north,  and  see  whether  there  exist  in  that  direc- 
tion any  such  traces  as  we  should  expect  these  highly  civilised 
Toltecs  to  have  left  behind  them.  No  ;  there  are  none.  Scour 
that  north  as  vigorously  as  you  will,  you  find  nothing  save 
the  ruins  in  Arizona  and  Colorado,  which  are  mere  heaps 
of  unmortared  stones  and  of  such  crude  workmanship  as 
to  date  themselves  (even  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  most  short- 
sighted inquirer)  well  into  historic  and  post-Spanish  times. 

There  are  no  actual  building  evidences,  then.  Let  us 
next  see  whether  a  study  of  the  tribes  massed  from  earUest 
times  in  that  vague  north  will  help  us  at  all.  Let  us  review 
the  groupings  of  the  barbaric  tribes  which  inhabited  America 
north  of  Mexico  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish  Conquest,  and  see 
whether  we  can  find  the  smallest  ethnic  loophole  for  these 
Toltecs  and  their  civilisation,  almost  rivaUing  that  of  Egypt,  to 
have  wriggled  through.  Taking  the  north-west  first,  the  parti- 
cular quarter  towards  which  all  good  Toltecites  gaze  with  awe 
as  being  the  direction  from  which  the  Toltecs  came,  what  do 
we  find  ?  From  time  immemorial  this  north-west  had  been 
inhabited  by  the  vast  Athapascan  stock,  stretching  from  the 
Canadian  Rockies  down  to  Mexico.  Oneof  their  largest  tribes,  the 
Shoshonees,  occupied  North-West  Mexico.  Of  these  Athapascan 
peoples  it  has  been  written,  "  They  are  nearer  the  brutes  than 
probably  any  other  portion  of  the  human  race."  It  is  obvious 
that  there  is  no  comfort  for  the  Toltecites  in  this  direction. 

Well,  let  us  take  the  north-east.  Who  lived  there  ?  The 
Apalachians  Uved  there,  "  a  loose  confederation,"  says  Brin- 
ton,  "  embracing  most  of  the  nations  from  the  Atlantic  coast 
quite  into  Texas."  The  majority  of  the  tribes  forming  this 
family,  such  as  the  Creeks,  the  Choctaws,  and  the  Seminoles, 

*  The  value  of  the  Tula  tradition  is  best  gauged  by  a  comparison 
of  the  dates  given  by  authorities.  Thus  Sahagun  [Historia  de  la 
Nueva  Espana)  places  its  destruction  in  319  B.C.  ;  Ixtlilxochitl  {Historia 
Chichemeca,  iii.  cap.  4)  brings  it  down  to  969  a.d.  ;  the  Codex  Ramirez 
gives  it  as  n68  a.d.  ;  and  so  on.  There  is  an  equally  amazing  varia- 
tion about  the  date  of  its  founding. 


246  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

were  nomadic  hunting  peoples,  a  few  only  stationary,  and 
those  with  no  record  of  any  civilisation.  The  Apalachians  then 
are  as  hopeless  as  a  source  of  comfort  for  the  theorists  as  the 
Athapascans.  Wedged  in  between  the  Athapascans  and  the 
Apalachians  were  the  Algonkins,  essentially  a  hunting  race 
of  strictly  nomad  habits.  Thus  the  three  great  peoples  who 
formed  the  impenetrable  ethnic  frontier  of  Mexico  at  the 
time  of  and  no  doubt  long  anterior  to  the  Conquest,  are 
clearly  seen  to  have  been  uncultured  peoples,  their  only 
dwellings  the  wigwam,  their  chief  occupation  the  chase,  re- 
doubtable fighters  but  undistinguished  by  those  "  victories 
of  peace  "  which,  as  the  poet  sings,  "  are  more  renowned  than 
war." 

It  is  fairly  certain,  then,  that  these  much-talked-of  Toltecs 
could  not,  nay,  did  not,  come  overland  from  the  north.  Driven 
thus  from  all  hope  landwards,  the  unfortunate  theorists, 
having  rashly  embarked  on  the  sea  of  myth,  must  now  launch 
on  a  far  rougher  sea,  namely  the  Atlantic  or  Pacific.  Their 
heroes  must  have  come  from  the  Ocean.  Venus-like,  they 
arose  perhaps  from  the  foam.  Seriously  though,  such  a 
proposition  is  nearly  as  complete  a  fairy  tale  as  the  Greek 
legend  of  the  Goddess  of  Love.  When  one  sees  the  maintainers 
of  the  oversea  route  obliged  to  say,  as  Dr.  Ph.  J.J.  Valentini 
does,  that  any  one  of  the  points  of  the  compass  may  have 
been  the  direction  from  which  this  remarkable  people  came, 
one  is  face  to  face  with  arguments  too  vague  to  be  worthy 
of  being  called  arguments  at  all.  There  is  no  dealing  with 
such  rash  generalisations.  One  must  leave  their  amiable 
employers  to  get  what  comfort  they  can  from  them,  with 
just  this  reservation :  the  Toltec  tradition  and  its  dates 
demand  the  acceptance  of  the  postulate  that  the  Toltecs 
arrived  in  Mexico  in  considerable  numbers  ;  for  between 
648  A.D.,  the  generally  accepted  date  of  their  traditionary 
landing,  and  the  twelfth  century,  when  they  were  expelled 
by  the  Aztecs,  there  is  not  time  for  a  mere  handful  of 
immigrants  to  have  metamorphosed  themselves  into  a  nation 
numbering  many  millions,  as  the  Toltec  story  insists  on 
our  believing.^  They  must  therefore  have  landed  in  great 
quantities,  and   such   an   exodus   as   this    presupposes,    well 

*  Ixtlilxochitl,  in  his  Relaciones  Historicas,  says  Topiltzin  was  the 
last  king  of  Tula  ;  that  Toltec  sovereignty  extended  a  thousand  leagues 
from  north  to  south,  and  eight  hundred  from  east  to  west ;  and  that 
in  the  wars  that  attended  its  downfall  5,600,000  persons  were  slain  ! 


WHO   WERE   THE    MAYANS?  247 

within  historic  times  too,  must  have  left,  no  matter  what 
land  they  hailed  from,  some  record  behind  it.  No  such 
record  exists  in  any  quarter  of  the  globe  of  an  exodus  of 
even  approximate  date. 

So  far  then  these  Toltecs  are  veritable  spectre  people, 
coming  from  nowhere,  going  nowhere  ;  like  the  coffin  of 
Mahomet,  suspended  in  the  mid-air  of  Mexico's  traditionary 
history.  Let  us  now  pass  on  to  Chapter  2  of  the  Toltec  romance. 
This  is  concerned  with  the  arrival  in  Mexico  of  the  militant 
Aztecs.  Now  who  are  the  Aztecs  ?  D.  G.  Brinton,  Dr. 
Richardson,  and  all  students  of  American  ethnology  agree  in 
believing  them  to  have  been  a  branch  tribe  of  the  savage 
and  warlike  Athapascans.  This  view  is  unassailable  on 
physical  and  philological  grounds.  Their  arrival  in  Mexico 
is  probably  fairly  accurately  given  by  their  traditions  as  to- 
wards the  end  of  the  twelfth  or  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  Every  one  is  agreed  that  at  the  time  of  their  in- 
vasion they  were  simply  barbaric  warriors.  They  brought 
no  building  specifications  with  them.  Nothing,  in  short, 
but  a  thirst  for  battle  and  new  lands. 

Now  whom  did  they  find  in  Mexico  ?  They  found  a 
race  whom  they  at  once  nicknamed  "  Toltecs."  Here  then, 
at  last,  we  are  getting  to  grips  with  these  mysterious  folk. 
"  Toltec  "  is  a  pure  Aztec  or  Nahuatl  word,  which  is  believed  to 
have  had  a  primary  meaning  of  "  those  who  dwelt  at  Tonalan," 
"  place  of  the  Sim  "  (some  authorities,  following  the  Codex 
Ramirez,  derive  it  from  tolin,  "  rush,"  i.e.  "  the  place  of  the 
rushes  ")  ;  but  which  in  later  Nahuatl,  according  to  Dr.  Otto 
Stoll,  undoubtedly  had  the  meaning  of  "  skilled  craftsman, 
artificer  or  builder."  The  Aztecs  had  never  seen  a  building 
before,  and  they  just  as  naturally  christened  the  race  they 
had  conquered  by  an  allusion  to  their  chief  characteristic, — 
their  strange  building  skill, — as  the  coalition  of  Germanic 
tribes  in  the  third  century  gained  the  name  "  Franks  "  from 
their  chief  characteristic,  their  love  of  freedom.  What  could 
possibly  be  clearer  ?  "  Toltec  "  is  a  local  name,  having  no 
existence  at  all  till  the  arrival  of  the  Aztecs  ;  a  mere  nickname, 
we  shall  hope  to  prove,  for  the  Mexican  branch  of  the  vast 
family  of  affiliated  tribes  which  had  from  prehistoric  times 
inhabited  Central  America,  and,  a  fact  most  important  of  all 
to  grasp,  inhabit  it  to-day.  In  a  word,  the  Toltecs  are  the 
Mayasn. 

When  you  have  realised  aU  this,  it  is  surely  very  easy  to 


248  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

see  how  the  Toltec  myth,  which  has  proved  the  undoing  of  so 
many  earnest  students,  arose.  The  Aztecs  came  "  out  of  the 
north."  There  is  at  least  no  doubt  of  that.  More,  there  is 
every  reason  to  beUeve  that  they  came  from  the  north-west, 
the  very  quarter  so  fanatically  urged  as  the  direction  whence 
came  the  Toltecs.  It  is  doubtful  whether  they  could  speak 
the  language  of  the  race  they  ousted  ;  in  fact  it  is  by  no  means 
a  bold  assumption  to  declare  they  could  not.  With  them  they 
undoubtedly  brought  many  traditions.  When  you  grasp  all  ' 
this,  and  realise  the  further  fact  that  Tula,  the  much-talked- 
of  Toltec  city,  that  place  which  is,  it  is  suggested,  identifiable 
with  the  present-day  town  forty  miles  north  of  Mexico 
City,  became  the  first  Aztec  capital  in  their  new  land, 
and  remained  so  till,  under  Moctezuma's  leadership,  they 
advanced  and  founded  Tenochtitlan,  the  present  city  of 
Mexico,  the  blindest  and  most  obtuse  can  surely  see  what 
the  truth  is.  The  whole  Toltec  imbroglio  is  the  result  of  a 
confusion  between  the  histories  of  two  peoples.  The  Aztecs 
came  from  the  north  :  the  Mayans  were  architects.  Though 
they  were  first  and  foremost  fighters,  the  conquerors  appear 
to  have  taken  very  kindly  to  their  conquered  neighbours' 
civilisation.  Becoming  in  their  turn  architects,  nothing 
would  be  more  natural  than  that  the  arrogant  Aztecs  should 
have  at  last  arrived  at  such  an  identification  of  themselves 
with  the  Mayans  that  the  traditions  and  histories  of  the  two 
races  became  once  and  for  all  inextricably  mingled  till  they 
formed  such  an  indivisible  tangle  as  to  defy  the  efforts  of 
chroniclers  to  unravel.^ 

The  confusion  between  the  story  of  the  two  peoples  just 
as  naturally  resulted  in  the  Tula  portion  of  the  Toltec  myth. 
It  was  in  all  probability  the  first  place  at  which  the  Aztecs 
saw  the  buildings  which  so  astonished  them,  as  it  certainly 
would  seem  to  have  been  the  place  which  they  chose 
as  their  early  capital.  The  importance  thus  attached  by 
them  to  it  would  very  naturally  in  the  course  of  time  give 

^  According  to  Dr.  Brinton,  the  name  Nahuatl,  which  of  late  years 
scholars  have  agreed  to  use  in  the  place  of  Aztec,  does  not  belong  to 
the  latter  people.  It  is  an  Aztec  word  meaning — first,  to  speak  clearly  ; 
second,  to  order  or  command ;  third,  to  speak  as  one  with  authority. 
Hence  it  gained  the  sense  of  "  astute,"  "  superior,"  and  Nahuatlaca 
were  the  Superior  People.  Dr.  Brinton  thinks  it  was  another  name 
given  by  the  Aztecs  to  the  dispossessed  Mayans,  and  that  as  the  years 
passed  and  the  legends  of  the  two  races  became  hopelessly  confused, 
the  Aztecs  adopted  the  name  themselves. 


WHO   WERE   THE   MAYANS?  249 

it  an  importance  in  the  history  of  the  Toltec-Mayans  who 
had  been  expelled  from  it.  As  the  early  stories  of  the  two 
peoples  became  confused,  Tula  would  be  traditionally 
beheved  to  be  the  first  city  of  the  Toltecs  as  well  as  that 
of  their  conquerors.  That  it  was  not  the  first  city  built 
in  Mexico  by  the  Toltec-Mayans  we  have  not  the  slightest 
doubt.  We  do  not  go  so  far  as  D.  G.  Brinton  :  we  cannot 
agree  with  him  that  it  was  built  by  the  Aztecs  or  Mexicans. 
It  probably  was  a  town  in  existence  at  the  coming  of  the 
Aztecs,  though  quite  a  small  settlement  of  a  race  which 
had  by  that  time  dotted  a  large  part  of  their  present  territory 
with  far  greater  cities.  That  it  had  any  greater  significance 
to  its  founders  there  is  not  a  tittle  of  real  evidence.  It  was 
simply  the  first  tOA^Ti  to  which  the  Aztecs  came,  and  around 
it  and  its  past  imagination  ran  riot.  The  tendency  of  semi- 
civilised  peoples  to  exaggerate  some  fact  of  no  importance 
into  a  great  feat  or  epoch-making  event  is  exempUfied  again 
and  again  in  history.  Thus  it  is  natural  enough  that  Tula 
should  have  attained  a  traditionary  importance  out  of  all 
proportion  to  its  real  place  in  Toltec-Mayan  history. 

The  only  ultimate  authorities  for  the  Toltec  theory  are  the 
two  chroniclers  Ixtlilxochitl  (a  Mexican  native)  and  Vietia 
(a  Spaniard) ,  both  of  whom  wrote  their  histories  subsequent  to 
the  Conquest.  There  is  no  reason  to  beheve  them  wilfully 
misleading.  They  simply  recorded  traditions  then  and  always 
current.  They  had  at  their  disposal  the  whole  existing  writmgs 
and  traditions  of  their  times.  They  had  the  picture-writings, 
and  doubtless  consulted  the  oldest  and  most  intelligent  of 
the  Indians. 

But  what  of  these  sources  of  knowledge  ?  The  picture- 
writings  were  simply  the  compilations  of  the  Aztecs,  and  were 
of  no  great  date,'  Indeed  it  is  certain  that  most  of  them  were 
not  written  imtil  the  century  previous  to  the  Conquest.  As 
to  the  Indians,  it  is  obvious  that  such  oral  tradition  as  they 
had  to  communicate  could  be  of  very  little  real  service  to 
the  historian.  They  were  one  and  all  enslaved  and  degraded 
by  the  Spaniards,  and  traditions,  if  not  got  from  unmolested, 

*  Of  Mexican  traditions  Dr.  Brinton  {A  Review  of  the  Data  for  the 
Study  of  the  Prehistoric  Chronology  of  America  :  1887)  says  :  "  It  is 
extremely  doubtful  if  their  earliest  reminiscences  refer  to  any  event 
outside  ihe  narrow  valley  parcelled  out  between  the  petty  states  of 
Tenochtitlan,  Tezcuco  and  Tlacopan.  .  .  .  The  chronicles  of  Mexico 
proper  contain  no  fixed  date  prior  to  that  of  the  founding  of  Tenoch- 
titlan in  the  year  1325  of  our  era." 


250  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

unconquered  natives,  are  always  unreliable,  as  has  been 
proved  again  and  again  by  the  missionaries  working  among 
subjugated  races.  Under  such  circumstances  it  is  notorious 
that  natives  will  tell  any  "  fairy  tales  "  which  a  fertile  imagina- 
tion, or  a  desire  to  ingratiate  themselves  with  their  new  masters, 
dictates. 

Such  then  is  the  flimsy  foundation  upon  which  the  whole 
Toltec  structure  has  been  reared.  Now  who  were  the  people 
whom  the  Aztecs  nicknamed  Toltecs  ?  We  have  already 
declared  them  to  have  been  the  ancestors  of  the  present 
Mayans  of  Yucatan  and  the  surrounding  countries — in  a  word, 
Mayans  themselves.  Let  us  see  if  we  can  get  some  way  on 
the  road  to  proof  of  our  assertion. 

That  a  people  were  living  in  Mexico  before  the  Aztec 
invasion  cannot  be  doubted  ;  but  if,  as  these  Toltec  enthusiasts 
would  have  us  believe,  they  were  apart  from  any  and  all 
other  American  peoples,  where  are  they  to-day  ?  From  the 
Land  of  Ice  to  the  Land  of  Fire,  there  was  not  a  spot  that 
was  so  thickly  populated  at  the  discovery  of  America  that 
a  weaker  tribe  need  have  been  wiped  out.  America  was  so 
sparsely  inhabited  that  a  conquered  tribe  could  always  find 
some  direction  to  flee  and  form  a  new  settlement.  But  if 
we  accept  the  Toltec  myth,  we  have  to  believe  that  a  nation 
numbering  some  four  or  five  millions  in  the  eleventh  century 
had  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  four  centuries  later,  disap- 
peared. It  is  just  possible,  but  it  is  most  improbable.  But  if 
they  did  not  disappear,  where  are  we  to  look  for  this  mislaid 
nation  ?  Tradition  says  they  went  south.  But  was  the 
country  to  the  south  of  Mexico  uninhabited  then  ?  For  if 
these  Toltecs  were  not  strong  enough  to  withstand  the  at- 
tacks of  the  Aztecs  in  their  own  strongholds,  it  is  scarcely 
reasonable  to  suppose  they  would  be  of  sufficient  strength 
or  in  sufficient  numbers  to  possess  themselves  of  and  conquer 
the  inhabitants  of  a  country  along  the  fertile  plains  of  one 
part  of  which,  Guatemala,  they  would  have  found,  it  may  be 
reasonably  supposed,  as  dense  a  population  as  the  Spaniards 
found  later.  The  Toltec  theory  presumes  that  the  expelled 
architects  went  south  and  found  vast  empty  spaces  where 
they  continued  their  building  operations.  This  is  presuming 
altogether  too  much.  Yucatan,  Chiapas,  Guatemala,  were 
all  inhabited  at  that  time  :  what  the  Spaniards  found  there 
proves  that  much. 

But  if  you  accept  our  suggestion  that  the  Toltecs  were  but 


WHO   WERE    THE    MAYANS?  251 

an  outlying  branch  of  the  great  Mayan  race  which  possessed 
all  Central  America  from  Arizona  and  Texas  to  the  frontier 
line  of  Nicaragua,  then  the  miraculous  disappearance  of  the 
Toltecs  is  not  miraculous  at  all.  They  fled  south  among  their 
own  people,  and  became  absorbed  by  a  natm^al  process  in 
the  various  parts  of  Mayan  territory,  where  they  found  build- 
ings as  great  and  greater  than  any  they  had  built  in  their 
northern  Mexican  home.  Far  from  the  fugitives  from  the 
mihtant  Aztecs  being  the  founders  of  the  wonderful  cities  in 
Yucatan  and  Guatemala,  they  were  at  the  time  of  their  flight 
probably  much  less  civilised  than  their  cousins  at  Chichen 
or  Palenque. 

But  who  were  these  Mayans,  and  where  did  they  obtain 
their  knowledge  of  building  ?  No  race  can  develop  the  art 
of  building  in  stone  without  leaving  well-marked  traces  of  its 
slow  growth.  First,  there  is  the  rough  stone  building,  which 
would  be  traceable  in  heaps  of  crumbling  rough-hewn  stones 
where  they  had  fallen.  Next,  would  come  that  stage  when 
they  would  learn  to  mortar  the  stones  together,  perhaps 
adding  rude  ornamentation  on  the  exterior  walls.  Very 
slowly  the  roughness  would  give  place  to  better-hewn  stones  ; 
patterns  in  the  ornamentation  would  be  evolved  ;  and  finally 
you  would  get  the  same  ornamentation  all  over  the  country, 
identical  as  is  the  decoration  of  such  cities  as  Kabah, 
Chichen,  and  Uxmal.  But  there  is  no  crude  work  in  Yucatan. 
The  unomamented  buildings,  such  as  the  Akad-Tzib  at  Chi- 
chen, are  obviously  of  the  same  date  as  the  ornamented 
structures.  They  have  the  same  form,  the  same  finish  of 
stone ;  and  everything  points  to  the  fact  that  the  plainness 
of  buildings  was  deliberate  and  in  some  way  in  keeping  with 
the  purpose  of  the  edifice. 

We  have  searched  for  the  early  stages  of  the  Mayan  build- 
ing civiUsation  in  the  caves  of  Yucatan,  where  traces,  if  any- 
where, of  the  embryonic  efforts  of  the  architects  might  be 
expected,  but  we  searched  in  vain.  Of  those  caves  that  have 
been  inhabited  there  are  but  few  that  have  any  signs  of  build- 
ing inside,  and  none  with  any  traces  of  carvings.  A  typical 
cave  of  those  which  had  been  built  in  we  found  in  Cozumel 
island  ;  but  it  was  almost  certain  that  it  had  not  been  used 
as  a  habitation  for  any  long  period.  Its  front,  which  had 
stood  exposed  to  weather  and  the  intrusion  of  wild  beasts,  had 
been  built  up,  with  a  doorway  in  the  centre.  Its  floor  of  earth 
was  found  some  four  feet  beneath  the  d6bris  that  had  blown 


252  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

in  and  collected  since  its  ancient  occupiers  had  deserted  it ; 
and  just  under  this  level  was  found  a  small  jar  of  beads  and 
scattered  around  were  potsherds  in  a  layer  of  charcoal  where 
the  cave-dweller  had  done  his  cooking.  It  is  the  opinion  of 
Mr.  Henry  C.  Mercer  {Hill-Caves  of  Yucatan  :  Philadelphia, 
1896),  who  in  1896  examined  most  of  the  caves  of  the  Southern 
Sierras,  that  they  were  not  dwellings  but  mere  halting-places 
of  a  wandering  people.  He  could  find  in  them  no  trace  of  an 
evolution  of  stone-building.  Of  those  that  had  any  kind  of 
carving,  he  says  "  they  are  random,  sketchy  figures,  many  of 
which  suggested  pictographs  of  North  American  Indians. 
With  a  few  exceptions  there  was  little  of  the  mannerism  of 
Yucatan  about  them  ;  and  if  they  had  been  inscribed  on  a 
cliff-side  on  the  Sasquehana  or  in  Ohio,  few  of  them  would  have 
seemed  out  of  place." 

The  objects  which  he  found,  and  the  depth  at  which  he 
found  them,  only  went  further  to  prove  that  his  conclusions 
were  correct.  Bones  of  animals  which  had  served  as  food, 
charcoal,  and  potsherds,  with  earth  of  sometimes  a  foot  deep 
between  the  layers,  went  to  show  that  the  cave  was  inhabited 
and  evacuated,  and  then  left  for  some  years  before  it  was 
again  occupied.  From  the  fact  that  horses'  teeth  were  found 
in  many  of  them,  but  always  of  course  in  the  topmost  layers, 
it  may  be  assumed  that  the  caves  were  in  use  (perhaps  only 
when  a  rout  was  taking  place)  after  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 
But  the  fact  that  none  of  the  potsherds  discovered  in  the 
caves  are  like  those  usually  found  among  the  ruins,  and 
especially  the  fact  that  no  vases  with  hieroglyphics  on  them 
are  found,  go  to  show  that  the  caves  in  Yucatan  were  but 
little  in  use,  if  at  all,  among  the  building  Mayans.  From 
all  this  it  would  seem  safe  to  conclude  that  if  these  caves  were 
ever  permanent  habitations,  it  was  at  a  period  anterior  to 
the  great  building  age  of  the  Mayan  race,  when  their  civilisation 
was  in  the  crude  stage  to  which  many  of  the  North  Americans 
had  attained.  This  conclusion  is  certainly  supported  by  the 
fact  above  referred  to,  that  the  coarse  carvings  at  Opichen 
are  almost  facsimiles  of  those  of  the  pictographs  of  the  Northern 
tribes. 

Thus  everything  would  seem  to  point  to  the  conclusion  that, 
whoever  these  Mayan  builders  were,  their  knowledge  of  archi- 
tecture was  not  slowly  evolved  by  them,  but  came  to  them, 
a  veritable  gift  of  the  gods,  already  developed,  from  some 
foreign  source.     What  that  source  was  we  shall  endeavour 


WHO   WERE   THE   MAYANS?  253 

to  show  in  the  next  chapter.  The  point  to  be  dealt  with 
here  is,  What  were  the  ethnical  affinities  of  the  Mayans  them- 
selves ?  To  what  branch  of  the  great  American  family  do 
they  belong  ?  We  have  endeavoured  to  show  that  the  mys- 
terious disappearance  of  the  Toltecs  and  the  traditionary 
account  of  their  flight  south  point  very  clearly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  country  south  of  Mexico  was  at  the  arrival 
of  the  Aztecs  inhabited  by  the  kindred  of  these  so-called 
Toltecs. 

A  curious  corroboration  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  tribe  known  as  the  Huastecas,  who  form  a  colony 
around  the  Panuco  River  in  the  east  of  Mexico,  and  on  the 
adjoining  coast  of  the  Gulf.  Every  ethnologist  agrees  that 
these  people  are  pure  Mayans  ;  but  the  puzzle  has  been  to 
explain  their  presence  in  Mexico,  where  to-day  there  are  no 
other  pure  Mayans.  The  usual  explanation  is  that  they  repre- 
sent a  solitary  migration  from  Yucatan.  Is  this  at  all  likely  ? 
Is  it  possible  to  believe  that  a  mere  handful  of  emigrants  could 
have  succeeded  in  making  a  lodgment  on  the  Mexican  coast 
in  the  face  of  the  certain  opposition  they  would  have  met 
with  from  the  mihtant  Aztecs  ?  It  would  have  been  almost 
an  impossibility  ;  nor  does  the  piece  of  country  held  by  the 
Huastecas  possess  any  of  those  features  which  might  be  ex- 
pected to  attract  immigrants.  It  seems  to  us  far  more  likely 
that  these  Huastecas  represent  a  remnant  of  the  original  in- 
habitants of  Mexico  expelled  by  the  Aztecs ;  that  while  the 
bulk  fled  southward,  a  small  band  moved  eastward  unnoticed, 
and  estabhshed  themselves  on  the  Panuco  River,  the  Aztecs 
being  too  occupied  with  their  conquests  in  the  south  to  trouble 
much  about  them.  Thus  with  some  years  to  consolidate 
their  position,  they  either  remained  unmolested  or  were  actually 
able  to  hold  their  own  against  the  Aztecs  till  the  Conquest. 
This  seems  a  far  more  reasonable  explanation  of  the  presence 
of  these  undoubted  Mayans  in  the  east  of  Mexico. 

As  the  Aztecs  pushed  their  way  into  the  north  of  Mexico, 
the  vast  majority  of  peaceful  Mayans,  no  match  for  the  warlike 
strangers,  fled  naturally  south,  save  these  few  Huastecas, 
who,  going  eastward,  were  either  strong  enough  to  repulse 
their  foes  or  took  refuge  in  lands  which  did  not  attract  the 
Aztecs  so  much  as  the  rich  vaUeys  of  Central  Mexico  ;  and 
thus  formed  a  permanent  settlement  on  the  east  coast,  while 
their  kinsfolk  joined  the  Mayan  populations  of  Yucatan  and 
Guatemala. 


254  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

But  when  you  have  assumed  that  the  Toltecs  were  Mayans, 
you  are  still  confronted  by  an  ethnological  problem.  It 
has  proved  curiously  difficult  to  classify  the  Mayans  among 
the  other  peoples  of  America.  The  Aztecs  are  satisfactorily 
accounted  for  as  Shoshonees,  a  tribe  of  the  Athapascans  ; 
and  some  ethnologists  have  tried  to  prove  that  the  Mayans 
are  also  of  the  same  stock.  These  efforts  have  proved 
futile.  All  available  evidence  is  against  such  a  conclusion. 
Physically  the  two  peoples  are  quite  separate,  even  to-day. 
The  most  casual  observer,  travelling  in  the  two  countries 
of  Mexico  and  Yucatan,  must  be  struck,  as  were  we,  by 
the  marked  distinction  in  features  and  general  physique 
between  the  two.  But  a  still  more  cogent  proof  of  their 
separation  is  afforded  by  a  study  of  the  two  languages.  They 
are  quite  different  in  structure,  vocabulary  and  everything. 

But  this  very  question  of  language  has  enabled  D.  G. 
Brinton  to  track  the  Mayans  to  their  stock.  By  a  careful 
comparison  of  one  hundred  Natchez  (an  Apalachian  tribe) 
words  with  their  equivalents  in  the  Mayan  dialects,  he  has 
proved  a  very  remarkable  affinity  between  the  two  languages. 
"  Of  these  hundred,"  he  writes,  "  five  have  affinities,  more 
or  less  marked,  to  words  peculiar  to  the  Huastecas  of  the 
River  Panuco ;  thirteen  to  words  common  to  Huastecas  and 
Mayan  ;  and  thirty-nine  to  words  of  similar  meaning  in  the 
latter  language."  This  linguistic  similarity  would  be  remark- 
able by  itself.  But  when  you  find  that  physically  such 
Apalachian  tribes  as  the  Seminoles  and  Creeks  are  strikingly 
like  the  Mayan  type,  and  when  you  realise  that  this  Apalachian 
stock  was  all  round  the  land  of  the  Mayans,  it  is  difficult  to 
resist  the  conclusion  that  the  Mayans  must  be  ultimately 
referred  to  this  stock.  The  Apalachians  joined  Mexico  on 
the  north-east  ;  they  stretched  down  the  peninsula  of  Florida, 
and  probably  originally  inhabited  Cuba  and  some  of  the  West 
Indian  islands,  before  the  arrival  there  of  the  powerful  Arawak 
people,  who  were  found  in  the  islands  by  the  Spanish. 

Being  thus  all  round  Mexico  and  Yucatan,  it  would  be 
curious  if  some  of  the  Apalachians  were  not  found  in  those 
countries.  Ethnological  data  are  woefully  lacking  in  all 
questions  affecting  the  vast  congeries  of  peoples  which  go  to 
form  the  aborigines  of  the  two  Americas.  But  it  would  cer- 
tainly seem  that  philologically,  physically,  and  geographically 
we  here  have  such  evidence  as  points  very  clearly  to  the  Mayans 
being  a  remote  offshoot  of  the  Apalachian  stock. 


WHO    WERE    THE    MAYANS?  255 

But  if  they  are  Apalachians,  they  certainly  did  not  derive 
their  building  skill  from  their  ancestors.  Florida  and  the 
Eastern  States  are  devoid  of  all  ancient  buildings.  The  much 
discussed  mounds  of  the  Mississippi  district  have  not  the 
remotest  relationship  with  the  temples  and  palaces  of  Yucatan  ; 
but  are  probably  totemic  symbols,  nothing  more  or  less. 

On  this  subject  Professor  Cyrus  Thomas,  in  Problems  of 
the  Ohio  Mounds  (Washington,  1889),  writes :  "  Mexico, 
Central  America  and  Peru  are  dotted  with  the  ruins  of  stone 
edifices,  but  in  all  the  mound-building  area  of  the  United 
States  not  the  shghtest  vestige  of  one  attributable  to  the 
people  who  erected  the  eastern  structures  is  to  be  found.  .  .  . 
Though  hundreds  of  groups  of  mounds  marking  the  sites  of 
ancient  villages  are  to  be  seen  scattered  over  the  Mississippi 
Valley  and  the  Gulf  States,  yet  nowhere  can  there  be  found 
an  ancient  house." 

It  is  true  that  the  island  of  Cuba  has  never  been  really 
thoroughly  explored ;  but  enough  has  been  done  to  show  that 
there  are  no  building  "  finds  "  likely  there.  Seiior  Andres 
Poey  in  a  paper  on  "  Cuban  Antiquities,"  read  before  the 
American  Ethnological  Society  in  1855,  speaks  of  the  great 
scarcity  in  the  island  of  relics  of  stone.  Only  four  statues, 
very  rude  representations  of  anthropoid  ape-like  animals, 
had  been  found.  As  monkeys  were  not  known  to  have 
ever  existed  in  Cuba,  it  would  certainly  seem  as  if  these 
carvings  had  been  brought  over  from  Yucatan,  with  the 
Mayan  inhabitants  of  which  country  it  is  certain  that 
the  Cuban  Arawaks  traded.  The  stone  implements  and 
earthenware  vases  found  have  also,  for  the  most  part,  been 
attributed  to  the  same  source.  Of  stone  buildings  the 
Arawaks  had  none.  "  The  villages  consisted,"  says  D.  G. 
Brinton,  writing  in  The  American  ArchcBologist  of  October, 
1898,  "  of  ten  to  twelve  communal  houses,  always  perishable  ; 
none  having  been  heard  of  as  stone." 

If  then  the  Mayans  are  akin  to  the  Apalachians,  there 
is  no  trace  among  their  kindred  of  such  elementary  forms 
of  building  as  would  have  certainly  been  found  if  the  archi- 
tecture which  has  made  them  so  famous  had  been  naturally 
developed.  Thus  we  are  bound  to  conclude  that  it  was 
exotic  ;  that  they  learnt  it  from  some  foreign  visitors  to  their 
territory  long  after  they  had  split  off  and  migrated  thither 
from  the  Apalachian  centre. 

Who  those  foreign  visitors  were  we  will  try  to  prove  in 


256  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

the  succeeding  chapter.     Here  let  us  summarise  the  foregoing 
pages  as  follows  : — 

1.  The  Toltec  theory  is  myth,  not  history. 

2.  The  Toltecs  were  never  an  historical  nationality. 

3.  The  word  "  Toltec  "  was  a  nickname  given  by  the  in- 
vading Aztecs  to  the  race  inhabiting  Mexico  on  their  arrival. 

4.  The  Toltecs  were  Mayans,  the  ancestors,  with  their 
kinsmen  further  south,  of  those  Mayan  peoples  to-day,  as  at 
the  Spanish  Conquest,  inhabiting  Central  America  from  the 
Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec  in  Southern  Mexico  to  the  frontier 
of  Nicaragua. 

5.  The  Mayans  are  of  the  Apalachian  stock,  and  had  long 
been  settled  in  Central  America  before  the  invasion  of  the 
Aztecs. 

6.  The  architectural  skiU  of  the  Mayans  was  not  developed 
by  them  naturally,  but  was  introduced  from  a  foreign  country 
some  centuries  before  the  Aztecs  invaded  their  northernmost 
possessions. 


CHAPTER    XVI 

WHO  WERE   AMERICA'S   FIRST   ARCHITECTS  ? 

THE  proposition  that  the  Mayans  were  taught  to  build 
by  foreign  visitors  involves  three  postulates. 

1.  Such  foreign  visitors  came  from  a  land  where  the  know- 
ledge of  architecture  had  reached  a  considerable  degree  of 
perfection. 

2.  They  landed  in  Central  America  well  within  historic 
times. 

3.  They  belonged  to  none  of  the  so-called  White  Races. 
These  postulates  very  materially  narrow  the  area  of  the 

globe  in  which  we  can  profitably  look  for  their  home  ;  and  a 
task  which  at  first  sight  appears  to  rival  the  proverbial  one 
of  looking  for  a  needle  in  a  haystack  becomes,  if  approached 
by  the  light  of  common  sense,  comparatively  simple. 

Common  sense  cannot  be  said  to  have  distinguished 
most  of  those  who  have  striven  heretofore  to  crack  this  archi- 
tectural nut.  Broadly  speaking,  there  have  been  two  con- 
tending bands  of  theorists :  those  who  were  determined  at 
all  costs  to  claim  the  architecture  of  Central  America  as  home- 
grown ;  and  those  who,  figuratively  speaking,  shut  their  eyes 
and  with  a  map  of  the  world  before  them  and  bodkin  in  hand, 
pricked  some  spot,  opened  their  eyes,  and  triumphantly  de- 
clared "  There's  the  place." 

As  for  the  first,  we  have  done  our  best  in  the  last  chapter 
to  show  that  they  have  not  a  leg  to  stand  on.  As  for  the 
second,  they  have  defeated  their  efforts  by  their  own  vague- 
ness. They  have  wandered  over  the  earth's  surface  and 
chosen  in  turn  any  and  every  coimtry  which  at  any  period 
of  its  history  has  been  known  to  possess  an  architecture  of 
its  own.  Thus  have  the  Egyptians,  the  Scandinavians,  the 
Phoenicians,  the  Chinese,  the  Japanese,  the  Tatars,  the  Poly- 
nesians, all  in  turn  been  suggested  as  the  originators  of  America's 
native  architecture ;   east,  west,  south,  north,  races  in  nearly 

257  17 


258  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

every  continent  have  been  commandeered  to  act  either  as  the 
parents  of  the  whole  Mayan  people  or  as  their  foreign  tutors 
in  the  art  of  building. 

The  most  remarkable  of  all  theories  was  that  advanced 
by  Dr.  Le  Plongeon,  who  invited  the  world  to  believe  that  the 
Mayans — or  Mayax,  as  he  insisted  upon  calling  them — were  the 
first  of  all  races  in  the  world  to  become  architects,  and  that 
they  taught  the  art  to  the  ancient  Egyptians  and  everybody 
else.  In  pursuance  of  this  perfectly  lunatic  suggestion,  he 
dated  the  civilisation  of  Central  America  11,500  years  back. 
This  preposterous  proposition  was  received  with  the  Homeric 
laughter  it  so  richly  deserved.  But  really  there  was  something 
to  be  said  for  the  poor  doctor's  point  of  view.  He  belonged 
to  the  class  of  theorists  who  at  all  hazards  wish  to  give  America 
the  glory  of  having  produced  the  very  remarkable  building 
skill  shown  to  have  existed  in  her  central  territories.  The 
only  difference  between  him  and  his  fellow-theorists  was  that 
he  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  and  they  had  not.  A 
few  thousand  years  were  trifles  to  a  man  who  could  theorise 
so  bravely  as  Le  Plongeon  ;  and  courage  is  always  admirable. 
The  good  doctor  was  at  least  no  craven,  no  timorous,  afraid- 
of-his-own-shadow  type  of  theorist ;  he  was  a  Titan  among 
the  theorising  minnows,  a  genius  in  the  art ;  for  he  possessed 
the  genius  of  enthusiasm. 

The  others  of  the  "  indigenous  "  school  have  proved  half- 
hearted and  vague.  If  you  insist  upon  their  coming  to  the 
point  and  saying  whence  the  builders  really  came,  they  try 
to  parry  your  insistence  by  asking  a  question  in  their  turn — 
"  Whence  came  the  African  Negroes  ?  "  To  this  the  correct 
reply,  according  to  Professor  E.  Morse,  is  "  From  Africa,  of 
course."  "  Originally  ?  "  "  Yes,  originally  :  they  constitute 
the  African  or  Negro  sub-species  of  Man."  This  is  a  mode  of 
arguing  which  is  fundamentally  unsound  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  the  cases  of  the  African  and  American  races  are 
not  analogous.  For  even  if  the  aboriginal  peoples  of  America 
could  be  assumed  to  be  as  strictly  indigenous  in  their  habitat 
as  the  negroid  peoples  are  generally  held  to  be  in  theirs,  you 
have  still  to  explain  an  isolated  outburst  of  civilisation  in 
Central  America  marking  off  an  extraordinarily  restricted 
area,  comparatively  speaking,  from  the  vast  continental  ex- 
panses north  and  south.  But  the  ethnical  problems  of  the 
Negro  and  the  American  are  not  even  so  far  analogous  ;  for, 
as  all  the  world  knows,  the  generally  accepted  theory  as  to 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   259 

the  American  race  is  that  it  must  be  ultimately  referred  to 
the  Mongoloid  division  of  mankind,  and  that  the  New  World 
was  in  prehistoric  times  peopled  from  Asia. 

But  if  this  view,  supported  as  it  is  by  a  physical  resemblance 
in  some  cases  so  remarkable  as  to  quite  stultify  the  suggestion 
of  coincidence,  were  upset,  you  would  still  be  confronted  with 
the  unanswerable  question  :  If  American  architecture  is  of 
home-growth,  why  was  it  restricted  to  one  very  small  area  ? 
For  the  proposition  that  it  is  indigenous  almost  demands  the 
postulate  that  it  evolved  at  such  an  early  date  in  some  form 
or  other  as  to  allow  time  for  it  to  spread  far  into  the  north 
and  south  of  the  New  World.  If  any  deduction  is  possible 
from  its  singular  locaUsation,  it  is  surely  that  it  was  introduced 
from  outside  and  at  so  comparatively  recent  a  date  before 
the  arrival  of  the  White  race  in  the  Americas  as  not  to  have 
permitted  time  for  it  to  spread  far.* 

Ever5rthing  then  points  to  the  exotic  nature  of  American 
architecture.  Whence  came  its  originators  ?  Our  postulates 
enable  us  to  narrow  the  inquiry  to  Egypt,  Japan,  China, 
India,  Ceylon,  and  the  Malay  Peninsula.  Let  us  take  these 
possibilities  in  this  order. 

Egypt  has  been  a  great  temptation  to  many,  and  in  truth 
it  is  difficult,  when  you  are  first  face  to  face  with  such  very 
Egyptian-looking  statues  as  the  Atlantean  figures  which  we 
found  at  Chichen,  and  which  are  described  on  p.  98,  to 
resist  the  thought  that  there  must  be  some  connection  between 
the  stone  marvels  of  the  Nile  Valley  and  the  palaces  of  Yucatan. 
But  putting  aside  the  extraordinary  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  mapping  a  possible  route  by  which  the  connection  between 
the  two  peoples  could  be  effected,  all  available  evidence  is 
against  you.  The  buildings  of  the  two  races  are  unhke  in 
structure  and  design,  in  ornamentation  and  decoration  ;  and 
if  this  dissimilarity  could  be  explained  away,  and  an  attempt 
made  to  link  the  two  ethnically,  there  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence, 
physically,  mythologically,  philologically,  or  such  as  might 
be  derived  from  a  community  of  manners  and  customs,  to 
help  out  the  effort. 

*  The  argument  of  localisation  is  not  upset  by  the  existence  of 
ruins  in  Peru.  Native  traditions  claim  no  great  age  for  the  things 
there,  which  are  acknowledged  to  be  of  a  very  crude  type.  Garcillaso 
de  Vega  {Comentarios  reales  de  los  Incas)  says  that,  according  to  Indian 
tradition,  the  first  Inca  King,  Manco  Capac,  established  his  empire 
only  four  centuries  before  the  Conquest.  The  Peruvian  ruins  probably 
date  from  the  later  years  of  the  fifteenth  century. 


26o  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

With  Egypt  gone,  we  have  to  deal  with  the  different 
parts  of  Asia  mentioned.  Asia  has  been  popular  with  many 
theorisers.  Lured  on  by  the  recollection  that  the  greatest 
ethnologists  agree  that  America  was  peopled  from  Asia  via 
the  Behring  Straits,  they  see  no  difficulty  in  the  Mayan 
architects  coming  that  way  too.  Indeed  these  Straits  are  a 
very  tempting  spot :  the  narrow  neck  of  land  where  the  two 
continents  almost  join.  It  is  less  than  36  miles  across  between 
East  Cape,  Asia,  and  Prince  of  Wales's  Cape,  America  ;  and 
on  those  rare  days  when  the  atmosphere  permits  (it  is  almost 
always  foggy  thereabouts),  one  can  see  across  with  the  naked 
eye.  Between  the  two  capes  are  three  small  (now  uninhabited) 
islands,  and  the  deepest  part  of  the  channel  is  but  30  fathoms 
(180  feet).  Before  Behring's  expedition  to  this  region  in  1728 
it  was  thought  that  the  continents  did  actually  join  ;  for 
Deschnev,  the  Russian  who  is  said  to  have  sailed  these  waters 
in  1648,  was  regarded  as  an  inventor  of  fables  when  he  stated 
that  a  passage  existed. 

The  affinity  of  the  Eskimos  to  the  Japanese  has  long  been 
a  favourite  theme  of  ethnologists,  and  Dr.  Torrell,  who  devoted 
much  time  and  study  to  this  question,  thinks  he  has  proved 
past  all  dispute  that  the  two  peoples  are  kinsmen.  But  be 
this  as  it  may,  and  whether  one  accepts  or  not  the  peopling 
of  the  Americas  from  Asia  via  the  Behring  Straits,  it  is  as 
good  as  impossible  to  maintain  that  the  builders  came  into 
America  by  this  route.  Were  this  so,  we  should  most  certainly 
find  traces  of  their  march  south  to  the  chief  field  of  their 
activities.  The  most  fanatical  of  the  theorists  must  surely 
admit  that  the  fact  that  we  do  not  is  an  insuperable  objection 
to  their  theory.  That  a  migrating  race  of  architects  passed 
through  the  whole  length  of  North  America  and  kept  their 
art  a  profound  secret  till  they  reached  the  centre  of  the 
New  World,  is  literally  unthinkable. 

No ;  if  America  was  peopled  from  Asia,  it  was  in  times  so 
remote  that  the  inhabitants  of  Asia  did  not  themselves  know 
the  art,  of  building.  The  age  of  American  Man  has  been  a 
keenly  debated  question.  Nothing  has  yet  been  found  which 
can  be  reckoned  a  proof  that  he  existed  previous  to  the  present 
geological  epoch.  Dr.  Lund,  who  has  devoted  much  time 
to  the  problem,  states  that  he  found  but  one  trace  of  man 
among  those  of  the  extinct  mammalia,  and  this  was  dubious, 
for  there  were  signs  that  the  strata  where  they  were  discovered 
had  been  disturbed  within  some  recent  period  during  which 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   261 

the  human  remains  had  possibly  been  buried.  But  American 
Man  must  at  least  be  prehistoric  ;  and  being  so,  he  is  all 
too  early,  if  he  was  to  bring  the  knowledge  of  building  with 
him.  And  if  it  is  urged  that  the  mysterious  architects  came 
in  well  within  historic  times,  after  the  New  World  was  already 
peopled  by  their  kinsmen,  the  lack  of  traces  of  them  and 
their  art  is  more  than  ever  a  full  answer.  That  the  builders 
came  from  Asia  we  are  convinced;  but  they  came  direct  to 
Central  America  by  sea. 

Taking  Japan  as  first  of  the  Asiatic  countries  from  which 
the  builders  may  have  come,  there  is  much  made  of  the  close 
similarity  of  the  objects  found  in  the  shell-heaps  of  North 
America  and  the  upper  Amazon  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  those  of  North  and  South  Japan,  especially  those  of 
Omori.  The  pottery  is  much  aUke  :  you  have  the  crenellated 
fillet  and  the  cord  markings.  But  these  features  of  prehistoric 
pottery  have  been  shown  to  exist  among  many  peoples. 
Again,  there  is  a  close  resemblance  in  the  stone  implements 
found  ;  but  Sir  John  Evans  in  his  Ancient  Stone  Implements 
of  Great  Britain  points  out  that  stone  implements  are 
identical  in  most  lands.  He  instances  those  of  the  Nile 
Valley,  which  are  so  precisely  hke  those  found  in  the  Kentish 
oolite  that  the  most  experienced  archaeologist  could  not  tell 
them  apart.  But  if  there  is  nothing  in  this  positive  evidence, 
there  is  much  in  the  negative  evidence  available.  The  archi- 
tecture of  Japan  is  derived  from  the  Chinese,  and  is  of  a  com- 
paratively recent  date.  It  is  in  all  ways  dissimilar  to  that  of 
Central  America.  Further,  that  the  Japanese  early  possessed 
the  potter's  wheel  is  proved  by  their  ancient  mortuary 
vessels.  There  was  not  a  potter's  wheel  in  America.  Again, 
the  Japanese  ritual  of  the  third  and  fourth  centuries,  as  con- 
tained in  the  Kojiki  and  Nihonji,  have  no  analogy  with  Mexican 
ritual.  Again,  in  Japan  and  Korea  we  find  bronze  mirrors  and 
bells  unknown  in  America,  and  an  early  knowledge  of  tempering 
steel  in  Japan  is  quite  lacking  in  the  land  of  the  Mayans. 

What  about  China  ?  Here  there  are  vague  resemblances 
between  the  buildings  of  the  two  peoples  ;  but  at  most  they 
are  those  features  in  which  one  might  trace  a  similarity  between 
the  productions  of  any  two  building  races.  As  in  Japan, 
ritual  and  customs  are  all  distinct  from  those  found  among 
the  Mayans.  Those  who  would  have  us  believe  that  Central 
American  civilisation  was  of  Chinese  origin  have  been  much 
influenced  by  that  fable  promulgated  by  the  Chinese  historian 


262  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

Li  Yen,  who  lived  in  the  seventh  century.  He  states  the 
existence  of  a  country  which  he  calls  the  "  Land  of  the 
Fusang,"  and  which  he  declared  lay  40,000  h  eastward  of 
China.  Li  Yen  had  the  tale  from  a  Buddhist  priest  Hwui 
Shan  ;  but  the  curious  point  is  that  the  latter  described  him- 
self as  a  priest  coming  from  the  "  Land  of  the  Fusang,"  and 
says  nothing  as  to  how  he  got  there,  or  how  be  became  a 
Buddhist  in  this  unknown  country.  In  an  article  in  vol.  Iv. 
of  New  Annals  of  Voyages  entitled  "  Researches  regarding  the 
Country  of  the  Fusang,"  H.  J.  von  Klaproth  points  out  that 
this  could  not  have  been  Mexico  because  of  the  horses  and 
carts  mentioned,  and  these  were  of  course  unknown  in  Mexico 
in  pre-Conquest  times.  He  says  Japan  was  the  place,  and 
this  he  supports  by  showing  that  it  was  early  called  Fusang 
(beautiful).  The  distance  as  given  by  Li  Yen  is,  according 
to  Klaproth,  no  difficulty,  as  the  "  li  "  was  a  very  variable 
measure,  quite  apart  from  the  fact  that  the  priest  would  have 
no  accurate  means  of  measuring.  His  40,000  li  may  be  on 
a  par  with  the  mulberry  trees  thousands  of  feet  high  and  the 
silkworms  7  feet  long  which  form  part  of  his  fairy  tale,  as 
Professor  E.  Morse  points  out  in  his  pamphlet  Was  Middle 
America  peopled  from  Asia  ? 

In  a  problem  like  this  small  proofs  are  often  most  valuable, 
and  if  all  else  were  lacking,  the  absence  in  Central  America 
of  the  glazed  roofing-tile  so  common  in  China  from  2000  B.C. 
is  very  significant  seeing  that  pottery-glazing  had  been 
brought  to  a  high  point  of  perfection  there.  Again,  in  China 
the  potter's  wheel  and  the  plough  were  in  common  use  from 
the  earliest  times,  but  there  is  no  trace  of  either  in  Central 
America.  Indeed,  no  one  has  been  able  to  produce  a  piece 
of  real  evidence  for  the  theory  that  the  Chinese  endowed  the 
Mayans  with  their  art  of  building. 

But  if  in  Eg^'^pt,  Japan,  and  China  we  have  not  been  even 
"  warm  "  as  children's  forfeit-games  have  it,  when  we  turn 
to  India  and  the  Malay  Peninsula  we  are  growing  distinctly 
"  burning."  In  such  a  problem  the  evidence  most  valuable  is 
perhaps  afforded  by  the  opinions  of  those  who  have  not  worked 
in  the  special  field  of  archeology,  and  are  thus  untrammelled 
by  theories.  Let  us  start  with  one  or  two  such  opinions,  and 
then  we  will  pass  from  this  general  to  the  particular  evidence 
which  to  our  minds  proves  that  America  obtained  her  archi- 
tecture from  this  part  of  Asia. 

Mr.   R.  Spence  Hardy  in  his  book  Eastern  Monachism 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   263 

(London,  1850),  after  seeing  drawings  of  the  monuments  of 
Yucatan,  on  p.  22  writes,  "  The  ancient  edifices  of  Chichen 
in  Central  America  bear  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  topes 
of  India.  The  shape  of  one  of  the  domes,  the  apparent  size, 
the  small  tower  on  the  summit,  the  trees  growing  on  the  sides, 
the  appearance  of  masonry  here  and  there,  the  style  of 
ornamentation,  and  the  small  doorways  at  the  base,  are  so 
exactly  similar  to  what  I  have  seen  at  Anuradhapura  that 
when  my  eyes  first  fell  upon  the  engravings  of  the  remarkable 
ruins,  I  supposed  that  they  were  represented  in  illustration  of 
the  dagobas  of  Ceylon." 

Writing  in  The  Edinburgh  Review  for  April,  1867,  another 
author  says,  "  The  great  temple  at  Palenque  so  closely  corre- 
sponds in  its  principal  details  with  that  of  Boro  Budor,  in  the 
province  of  Kedu  (Java)  .  .  .  as  to  place  beyond  all  reasonable 
debate  the  common  purpose  and  origin  of  both.  Both  were 
elevated  on  a  series  of  graduated  platforms  or  terraces  ;  and 
are  reached  by  successive  flights  of  steps,  facing  the  cardinal 
pKDints.  The  chambers  in  both  are  disproportionately  small, 
with  no  apertures,  except  the  doorways,  for  the  admission  of 
air  and  light  ;  their  curved  ceilings,  formed  of  stones  over- 
lapping each  other,  triangular-wise  and  constituting  what  is 
known  as  the  cyclopean  arch,  are  precisely  alike." 

Other  authors  might  be  quoted  to  show  that  the  general 
appearance  of  the  two  sets  of  ruins  is  so  similar  as  to  attract 
the  attention  of  the  casual  visitor  ;  but  we  will  now  pass  to 
our  particular  evidence.  As  will  have  been  seen  from  many 
of  our  illustrations,  the  buildings  of  Central  America  were, 
with  but  a  few  exceptions,  built  on  pyramids.  Now  it  is  a  fact 
that  wherever  Buddhism  prevailed  in  ancient  times  we  find 
the  truncated  pyramid,  either  of  the  square  or  round  form. 
As  at  the  temple  of  Boro  Budor,  these  pjnramids  generally  had 
buildings  on  the  top.  They  were  built  of  earth  and  rubble 
covered  with  a  layer  of  bricks  or  hewn  stone,  the  whole  then 
plastered  over  with  stucco  which,  according  to  Spence  Hardy, 
is  composed  of  lime,  cocoanut  water,  and  the  juice  of  the 
paragua.  The  ruins  of  Chichen,  Uxmal,  Kabah,  Sayil,  Labna 
and  all  the  others  we  visited  were  built  in  the  same  way. 
The  p5rramids  are  invariably  built  of  earth  and  rubble  covered 
over  with  a  layer  of  hewn  stone  slabs  of  various  sizes.  The 
walls  of  buildings,  as  in  the  Tennis  Court  at  Chichen,  often 
had  a  section  in  the  centre  filled  up  with  rubble.  And  in 
most  cases  the  whole  had  been  stuccoed  over. 


264 


THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 


■  Now  let  us  take  that  most  characteristic  of  all  features  of 
Mayan  architecture,  the  so-called  Mayan  arch.  In  the  strict 
sense  it  is  not  an  arch  at  all.  It  never  reached  the  stage  of 
being  curved,  but  was  a  series  of  inverted  steps  rising  to  the 
roof  and  crowned  with  a  slab,  as  will  be  plainly  seen  in  our 
illustration.  Sometimes  the  steps  were  hewn  off  so  as  to  give 
an  even  surface  on  which  plaster  was  smeared.  Now  this  peculiar 
arch  is  found  in  ancient  Buddhist  structures  and  nowhere  else 

in  the  world.  John 
Crawfurd  in  his 
History  of  the  In- 
dian Archipelago 
(3  vols.  :  Edin- 
burgh, 1820),  in 
vol.  ii.  p.  200,  when 
speaking  of  the  in- 
terior of  the  build- 
ings there,  writes : 
"  The  stones  over- 
1  a  p  each  other 
within  so  as  to 
present  to  the  eye 
the  appearance  of 
inverted  steps  of  a 
stair.  .  .  .  The 
builders  of  Bram- 
hanan  had  pos- 
sessed the  art  of 
turning  the  ellipti- 
cal arch  and  vault, 
for  the  entrances 
and  doorways  are 
all  arched  and  the  roofs  vaulted.  A  circular  vault  or  arch, 
however,  is  nowhere  to  be  found  among  the  ruins  ;  and 
the  principle  of  turning  an  arch  is  nowhere  carried  to  such 
a  length  as  to  convey  the  impression  of  grandeur  or  magnifi- 
cence." This  might  as  appropriately  have  been  written  of 
the  Mayan  buildings.  Where  in  the  very  few  instances  the 
arch  was  continued  along  more  than  one  side  of  the  building, 
as  in  the  Castillo  of  Chichen,  it  does  not  make  a  circular  turn, 
but  comes  to  a  corner  and  then  goes  off  at  right  angles.  The 
only  circular  turning  arch  we  saw  was  the  continuously 
rounded  one  in  the  Caracol  at  Chichen. 


DIAGRAM    OF    MAYAN    ARCH. 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   265 

Next,  let  us  take  the  interior  wall  paintings  of  the  buildings 
of  both  countries.  Most  of  the  inner  walls  of  the  buildings 
in  Central  America  bear  traces  of  paints  on  the  plaster.  The 
biggest  room  at  Chichen,  that  on  the  south  side  of  the  Nunnery, 
47  feet  by  9,  was  once  covered  with  paintings  from  the  floor 
to  the  apex  of  the  roof.  So  were  the  smaller  rooms.  But 
owing  to  vandahsm  and  natural  decay  of  the  plaster,  they 
cannot  now  be  properly  traced.  There  is,  however,  enough 
to  show  that  they  represented  the  inhabitants  of  the  city. 
Again,  in  the  House  of  the  Tigers,  standing  up  gaunt  and 
majestic  on  the  wall  of  the  Tennis  Court,  the  everyday  life  of 
the  builders  is  depicted  by  the  artist  in  blues,  greens,  yellows, 
and  a  reddish  brown. 

Now  turn  to  the  ancient  Buddhist  edifices.  Spence  Hardy 
(Eastern  Monachism,  p.  230)  says :  "  The  whole  interior, 
whether  rock,  wall,  or  statue,  is  painted  in  brilhant  colours, 
but  yellow  much  predominates.  In  one  place  the  artist  has 
attempted  to  depict  part  of  the  early  history  of  the  island, 
beginning  with  the  voyage  of  Wijaya,  which  is  repre- 
sented by  a  ship  with  only  the  lower  mast,  and  without 
sails  ;  alongside  are  fishes  as  large  as  the  vessel.  In  repre- 
senting the  buildings  of  the  great  dagobas  of  Anuradhapura, 
the  proportions  are  no  better  preserved  and  these  artificial 
mountains  appear  to  be  httle  larger  than  the  persons  employed 
in  finishing  them.  .  .  .  The  ornamental  paintings,  where 
proportion  was  not  of  paramount  importance,  are  very  neat, 
and  all  the  colours  appear  to  be  permanent  and  bright."  This 
lack  of  proportion  in  the  human  figures  is  very  noticeable  at 
Chichen,  the  figures  often  entirely  dwarfing  the  huts  in  which 
they  are  supposed  to  be  standing. 

Next,  let  us  take  the  isolated  example  of  decoration,  about 
which  there  has  been  much  controversy,  the  Red  Hand.  We 
have  before  spoken  of  this  strange  mark  on  the  walls  of  Mayan 
buildings.  It  looks  like  a  hand  that  has  been  dipped  in  a 
reddish-brown  pigment,  almost  blood-colour,  and  then  pressed 
upon  the  wall.  This  in  many  cases  it  undoubtedly  is,  for 
the  actual  lines  of  the  hand  can  be  discerned.  Now  Le 
Plongeon,  in  his  Vestiges  of  the  Mayans,  was  the  first,  we 
believe,  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  The  New  York  Herald 
of  April  I2th,  1879,  ill  describing  General  Ulysses  S.  Grant's 
visit  to  Ram  Singh,  Maharajah  of  Jeypoor,  says,  "  We  passed 
small  temples,  some  of  them  ruined,  some  others  with  offerings 
of  grains  or  fruits  or  flowers,  some  with  priests  and  people 


266  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

at  worship.  On  the  walls  of  some  of  the  temples  we  saw  the 
marks  of  the  human  hand  as  though  it  had  been  steeped  in 
blood  and  pressed  against  the  white  wall.  We  were  told  that 
it  was  the  custom,  when  seeking  from  the  gods  some  benison, 
to  note  the  vow  by  putting  the  hand  into  a  liquid  and  printing 
it  on  the  wall.  This  was  to  remind  the  gods  of  the  vow  and 
prayer,  and  if  it  came  to  pass  in  the  shape  of  rain,  or  food,  or 
health,  or  children,  the  joyous  devotee  returned  to  the  temple 
and  made  offerings." 

Stephens,  in  the  appendix  of  vol.  ii.  of  Incidents  of  Travel 
in  Yucatan,  gives  a  communication  from  Henry  Rowe 
Schoolcraft,  who  writes :  "The  figure  of  the  human  hand  is 
used  by  the  North  American  Indians  to  denote  supplication 
to  the  Deity  or  Great  Spirit.  ...  In  the  course  of  many  years' 
residence  on  the  frontiers,  including  various  joumeyings  among 
the  tribes,  I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  remark  the  use 
of  the  hand  alone  as  a  symbol,  but  it  has  generally  been  a 
symbol  applied  to  the  naked  body  after  its  preparation  and 
decoration  for  sacred  or  festive  dances.  And  the  fact  deserves 
further  consideration  from  these  preparations  being  generally 
made  in  the  arcanum  of  the  medicine  or  secret  lodge  or  some 
other  private  place,  and  with  the  skill  of  the  priest's, 
or  medicine  man's,  or  juggler's  art.  The  mode  of  applying 
it  in  these  cases  is  by  smearing  the  hand  of  the  operator  with 
white  or  coloured  clay,  and  impressing  it  on  the  breast,  the 
shoulder,  or  other  part  of  the  body.  The  idea  is  thus  con- 
veyed that  a  secret  influence,  a  charm,  a  mystic  power,  is  given 
to  the  dancer,  arising  from  his  sanctity  or  his  proficiency  in 
the  occult  arts.  This  use  of  the  hand  is  not  confined  to  a 
single  tribe  of  people.  I  have  noticed  it  alike  among  the 
Dacotahs,  the  Winnebagoes,  and  other  Western  tribes,  as 
among  the  numerous  branches  of  the  Red  Race  still  located 
east  of  the  Mississippi  River  above  the  latitude  of  42  degrees 
who  speak  dialects  of  the  Algonquin  languages." 

There  is  thus  no  doubt  that  the  "  red  hand  "  of  the  Mayans 
had  its  analogy  among  the  tribes  of  North  America  ;  and 
thus  by  itself  it  is  of  little  moment  in  the  present  argument. 
But  we  have  made  a  singular  and  most  important  discovery. 
On  the  friezes  of  the  Stupa  of  Bharahat  in  India,  found  in 
1873  by  Sir  Alexander  Cunningham — the  date  of  the  building 
of  which  is  accepted  as  approximately  200  B.C. — are  rows  of 
hands  carved.  These  hands  are  precisely  similar  in  shape  to 
those  we  discovered  in  great  numbers  on  the  ruins  in  the  island 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   267 

of  Cozumel,  and  to  those  we  saw  on  other  Mayan  ruins.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  this  symboUc  decoration, 
and  we  believe  that  here  exists  a  most  important  link  in 
the  chain  of  evidence  connecting  America  and  the  East.  There 
are  those  who  will  at  once  declare  that  the  very  fact  that  the 
symbol  can  be  shown  to  have  had  a  wide  use  in  North  America 
forbids  the  idea  that  it  came  from  the  East.  This  is  clearly 
not  so.  If  the  date  which  we  shall  suggest  as  the  likely  one 
for  the  arrival  of  the  Eastern  immigrants  in  Central  America 
be  even  approximately  accurate,  there  would  be  ample  time 
for  the  symbol  to  spread  sufficiently  into  the  north  for  School- 
craft in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  find  it  broadcast 
among  very  distant  tribes.  Among  such  a  proverbially 
superstitious  race  as  the  American  Indians,  such  a  symbol 
would  rapidly  "  catch  on,"  and  the  fact  that  a  very  extended 
trade  existed  between  the  natives  of  Yucatan  and  the  tribes 
around  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  from  early  times  makes  its  intro- 
duction a  very  easily  explained  fact. 

Next,  let  us  make  a  brief  examination  of  the  architectural 
ornamentation  of  the  ancient  buildings  of  the  Buddhist  East 
and  those  of  Central  America,  and  see  if  there  exist  any 
similarities  which  are  of  a  nature  to  help  the  proof  of  the  con- 
nection. Much  has  been  made  of  that  peculiar  feature  of  Mayan 
decorative  art,  the  "  snouted  mask  "  or  "  elephant  trunk," 
common  on  the  buildings  of  Palenque,  Chichen  and  Uxmal,  and 
many  other  cities.  This  is  shown  in  many  of  our  illustrations. 
It  is  a  trunk-like  projection  which  is  used  as  an  ornamentation 
on  the  cornices.  In  this  some  have  eagerly  found  a  reminiscence 
of  India's  elephant.  There  would  not  seem  to  be  the  least 
reason  for  these  zoological  speculations.  An  examination  of 
the  ornament  reveals  a  rudely  carved  face  on  the  wall  behind  ; 
and  if  we  turn  to  the  Codex  Coriesianus  we  find  recurring 
therein  the  figure  of  a  deity  with  a  peculiarly  elongated  nose, 
an  exact  miniature  of  this  much  discussed  architectural 
ornamentation.  Thus  there  can  be  httle  doubt  that  the 
"  snouted  mask  "  was  the  symbol  of  a  deity,  possibly  the 
Tapir-god,  who  is  always  represented  with  a  snout  which  is  a 
parody  of  that  of  the  real  animal. 

But  if  there  is  nothing  in  the  elephant  theory  of  the 
so-called  "  snouted  mask,"  there  is  a  very  curious  type  of 
ornamentation  in  some  of  the  Mayan  buildings  which  may 
prove  of  great  import  in  this  connection.  At  Labna,  at 
Copan  and  elsewhere,   are  found,   as  the  finish  of  cornices, 


268  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

alligators'  heads — the  one  we  saw  at  Labna  having  a  half- 
curled  "  elephant  trunk," — with  jaws  agape,  from  within 
them  a  grotesque  face  peering  out.  This  is  so  peculiar  a 
design  that  it  must  be  admitted  that  a  parallel  to  it  in  any 
land  would  be  at  least  suggestive.  We  have  found  an  exact 
parallel  where  we  should  most  have  hoped  to  find  it.  Heads 
of  the  alligator's  congener,  the  crocodile,  exist  in  large  numbers 
at  Boro  Budor  and  in  the  ruined  Buddhist  cities  of  Ceylon. 
In  his  Camhodge  et  Java  (1896)  M.  Albert  Tissandier  gives 
illustrations  of  the  gargoyles  decorating  the  terraces  of  Boro 
Budor,  showing  them  to  be  the  fantastic  heads  of  crocodiles, 
surmounted  by  a  half-curled  elephant  trunk.  He  writes 
(we  translate)  :  "  This  type  of  crocodile,  ornamented  with 
the  trunk  of  an  elephant,  appears  to  be  of  Singhalese  origin. 
I  have  remarked  numerous  examples  at  Anuradhapura 
in  Ceylon,  the  building  of  which  is  much  more  ancient  than 
Boro  Budor,  and  also  at  Polonnaruwa.  .  .  .  The  arcades 
(at  Boro  Budor)  end  at  the  base  in  a  head  of  a  crocodile 
like  the  gargoyles  I  have  described  above.  From  out  the 
open  jaws  of  these  monsters  peers  in  each  case  a  little  demon 
with  grinning  face."  It  is  difficult  indeed  to  believe  that  so 
singular  a  design  and  detail  of  decoration  should  have  been 
evolved  at  once  in  ancient  Buddhist  India  and  among  the 
American   Indians  of  Yucatan  and  Guatemala. 

An  exhaustive  comparison  of  the  ornamentation  of  Mayan 
and  Eastern  buildings  would  doubtless  yield  valuable  data ; 
but  when  we  state  that  there  are  many  hundreds  of  patterns 
of  decoration  employed  on  the  buildings  of  Yucatan,  it  will 
be  seen  that  this  would  need  a  volume  to  itself.  Broadly  speak- 
ing, the  decorations  of  the  two  types  of  architecture  are  dis- 
similar ;  and  if  one  reflects,  this  is  really  no  more  than  one 
would  expect.  As  we  have  said,  the  Eastern  introducers  of 
building  could  not  bring  with  them  much  knowledge  of  detailed 
ornamentation.  The  actual  decorative  designs  on  Mayan 
structures  might  be  reasonably  expected  to  be  developed  in 
the  country.  Only  in  spots  where  the  invaders  had  their 
actual  settlements  should  we  find  any  characteristic  designs. 
And  this  is  exactly  what  we  do  find  at  Copan  and  Quirigua, 
which  we  shall  presently  try  to  show  were  among  the  very 
earliest,  if  not  the  earliest,  of  their  locations.  At  these  two 
places  the  ruins  consist  chiefly  of  stelae  and  altars,  and  the 
decorations  of  these  are  un-American  and  Oriental  in  character. 

But  if  there  is  little  similarity  between  the  minuter  archi- 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECtS  ?   269 

tectural  details  of  the  Mayan  and  Buddhist  buildings,  we  believe 
that,  carefully  studied,  the  former,  and  particularly,  as  we  should 
have  expected,  those  at  Copan  and  Quirigua,  exhibit  distinct 
survivals  of  Buddhist  influence.  Mr.  Maudslay,  in  his  superb 
series  of  photographs  of  stelae  {Biologia  Centrali- Americana), 
shows  clearly  in  the  hands  of  nearly  every  figure  what  he 
calls  a  "  manikin  staff  " — a  short  stick  surmounted  by  a 
human  figure  issuing  from  feathers  or  leaves.  He  cannot 
explain  it,  but  we  believe  that  it  may  be  nothing  less  than  a 
much  corrupted  survival  of  the  sacred  lotus  held  by  Buddhist 
images.  In  photographs  of  carvings  at  Bharahat  and  also 
at  Boro  Budor,  the  Buddhas  and  their  attendants  appear 
to  hold  just  such  short  staves,  really  the  rubbery  stem,  sur- 
moimted  by  the  lotus-flower,  out  of  which  seems  to  issue  in 
some  instances  a  kind  of  face.  There  appear,  too,  in  the  grasp 
of  many  figures  on  the  friezes  at  Bharahat  short  sticks  sur- 
mounted by  manikins  seated  on  bannerets.  The  "  manikin 
staves  "  at  Copan  may  be  a  blended  memory  of  these  two 
Buddhistic  symbols. 

Again,  Mr.  Maudslay  noticed  a  detail  of  Mayan  decoration 
which  has  escaped  other  students.  He  points  out  that  at 
Palenque  and  elsewhere  is  represented  a  plant  which  he  calls 
a  water  plant  because  fish  are  seen  feeding  on  the  flowers. 
"  The  leaves  and  flower-buds,"  he  writes,  "  are  very  clearly 
drawn,  and  have  somewhat  the  appearance  of  those  of  a 
water  hly."  He  is  probably  right :  it  is  a  water  lily — the 
Buddhist  lotus — which  figures,  often  with  fish  swimming 
round,  in  almost  every  carving  at  Boro  Budor  and  the 
ruined  Buddhist  cities.  The  drawing  he  gives  of  the  Palenque 
carving  is  so  exact  a  copy  of  the  Buddhist  lotus  as  to  be 
quite  amazing. 

The  figures  on  the  stelae  at  Copan  and  Quirigua,  in 
many  instances  have  across  their  breasts  what  looks  like 
a  broad  band.  We  believe  this  to  be  another  Buddhist 
survival — viz.  the  ola  or  palm-leaf  book  which  Buddha  is 
nearly  always  shown  holding,  and  which  appears  in  the 
famous  rock  statue  of  King  Parakrama  in  the  ruins  of 
Polonnaruwa  (see  H.  W.  Cave,  Ruined  Cities  of  Ceylon), 
exactly  as  portrayed  in  Guatemala. 

The  headdresses  of  the  stelae  statues  are  most  reminiscent 
of  the  triple  tiara  of  Buddhist  images.  The  large  square 
or  round  ear-ornaments  at  Quirigua  are  precisely  Uke  those 
in    the    sculptures    of    Boro   Budor   and    in   the    island   of 


270  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Madura,  a  report  on  the  ruins  of  which  latter  was  pubhshed 
in  1904  by  the  Dutch  Government  {Archaeologisch  Onderzoek 
op  Java  en  Madura).  A  plate  in  the  latter  work  represents 
stelae  found  in  Madura  in  feature  and  decoration  so  amazingly 
like  those  of  Quirigua  that  one  might  be  forgiven  for  thinking 
one  was  looking  at  one  of  Mr.  Maudslay's  superb  photographs. 
The  latter  noted  at  Copan  curious  forehead  marks  which 
suggest  to  us  the  sacred  Buddha  markings.  On  the  north 
face  of  the  gigantic  monolithic  turtle  at  Quirigua  is  a  cross- 
legged  figure  which  in  Mr.  Maudslay's  plate  exhibits  in  the 
fullest  manner  many  Buddhist  survivals. 

At  Palenque,  again,  there  are  the  very  peculiar  Temples 
of  the  Cross  and  the  Foliated  Cross,  which  appear  to  have 
no  parallels  in  other  Mayan  ruins.  We  suggest  that  here  too 
is  a  Buddhist  survival,  namely  that  the  "  Crosses  "  (it  is  more 
obvious  in  the  foliated  one)  are  crude  representations  of  the 
Sacred  Tree  of  Buddhism,  the  "  Tree  of  Wisdom,"  tradition- 
ally a  pippul-tree,  beneath  which  Gotama  attained  Buddha- 
hood,  and  which  occurs  again  and  again  on  the  Boro  Budor 
friezes  and  on  all  the  ancient  Buddhist  carvings,  and  around 
which  figures  are  grouped  in  adoration  as  are  those  in  the 
Palenque  reliefs.  As  the  Palenque  tablets  suggest  that  the 
"  Cross  "  is  the  direct  object  of  worship,  it  may  be  worth 
while  here  to  mention  that  in  the  oldest  Buddhist  sculptures 
Buddha  himself  is  never  represented  directly,  but  always 
under  a  symbol ;  either  the  sacred  footprints — Buddha-pats — 
or  the  tree  beneath  which  his  meditations  led  him  to  divine 
knowledge. 

But  the  faces  of  the  statues  will  take  us  a  step  further  :  for 
they  seem  to  be  representations  of  those  human  types  peculiar 
to  Cambodia,  Siam,  and  the  Malay  Peninsula,  as  will  be 
seen  from  the  illustrations.  They  have  the  elongated, 
somewhat  oblique  eye  of  those  peoples  ;  they  have  not  the 
American,  but  the  Siamese  nose.  They  are  beardless  (for  this 
reason  some  have  declared  them  to  be  women),  and  they  wear  an 
Oriental  headdress  such  as  is  found  in  none  of  the  admittedly 
Mayan  ruins,  and  which  we  beheve  we  have  identified  as  the 
ancient  Indian  turban  shown  clearly  in  the  carvings  at 
Bharahat. 

But  we  must  revert  directly  to  the  all-important  evidences 
afforded  by  a  study  of  Copan.  Here,  following  up  our  argument 
that  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  the  invading  builders  would 
tend  to  weaken  as  they  mixed  more  with  the  Indians,  or  as  their 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   271 

lessons,  perhaps  after  their  deaths,  were  adapted  to  purely  native 
ideas  and  designs,  we  find  an  illustration  in  point  in  Piedras 
Negras,  a  ruined  city  on  the  Usumacinta  discovered  by  Herr 
Teobert  Maler.  Here,  some  way  from  their  first  settlement, 
the  distinctly  Oriental  influence  is  on  the  wane,  but  it  is  still 
strong.  A  carving  there  unearthed  by  Herr  Maler  is  so 
reminiscent  of  Buddhist  monuments  that  it  must  appeal  to 
the  most  undiscerning.  The  figure  of  the  seated  god  is,  in 
truth,  the  best  the  sculptor  could  do  from  memory. 

Again,  at  Palenque  the  influence  of  the  East  is  fading  still 
more  from  the  work  ;  yet  is  there  some  remaining.  The 
figures  have  the  characteristic  features  of  the  Americans,  and 
the  native  headgear  ;  but  the  attitude  is  the  typical  Buddhist 
one,  and  there  is  moreover  one  figure  which  takes  us  back 
to  the  purer  orientalism  of  Copan.  "  The  principal  figure," 
says  Stephens,  "  sits  cross-legged  on  a  couch  ornamented  with 
two  leopard's  heads  ;  the  attitude  is  easy,  the  physiognomy 
the  same  as  that  of  the  other  personages,  the  expression  calm 
and  benevolent.  .  .  .  The  headdress  differs  from  most  of 
the  others  at  Palenque  in  that  it  wants  the  plimie  of  feathers  " 
{Central  America,  Chiapas  and  Yucatan,  vol.  ii.,  p.  318).  In 
the  Buddhist  carvings  Buddha  is  often  represented  seated  on 
a  couch  carved  in  the  form  of  a  tiger  or  lion,  or  really  two, 
for  the  body  is  double-headed.  This  seat  is  spoken  of  in  the 
Sanskrit  as  Simhasana,  literally  "  the  seat  of  lions,"  so  called 
from  the  crouching  animals,  which,  however,  appear  in  all 
carvings  as  only  two.  Too  much  must  not  be  made  of  this 
singular  circumstance,  perhaps,  because  such  animal  seats  have 
been  found  at  Persepolis,  and  again  in  the  island  of  Cyprus,  and 
the  Greeks  got  the  idea  from  Assyria.  Stephens  found  one  of 
these  animal  couches  at  Uxmal,  but  on  this  there  was  no 
figure.  There  may  not  be  anything  in  the  occurrence  of  these 
seats  in  America  ;    but  we  think  it  at  least  suggestive. 

At  Palenque  in  the  Cross  Tablets  we  have  the  chief  figures 
standing  on  dwarf  crouching  human  forms.  At  Tikal,  north- 
east of  Lake  Peten,  a  carved  wooden  lintel  discovered  by 
Mr.  Maudslay  depicts  two  figures  standing  on  two  crouching 
bodies  which  he  believed  to  represent  prisoners.  Elsewhere 
in  Mayan  ruins  the  design  prevails.  Now  in  the  Indian, 
Cambodian,  and  Javanese  ruins  recur  again  and  again  these 
crouching  figures,  acting  as  footstools  for  the  chief  personages 
of  the  sculpture.  Sometimes  they  are  human,  sometimes 
apes  or  demons.     They  are  the  equivalents — it  is  believed — 


272  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

of  the  Hindu  Garudas,  who  took  in  Hindu  myth  many  forms  ; 
and  we  suggest  that  the  Mayan  fondness  for  this  queer  design 
was  another  heritage  from  their  architectural  tutors. 

In  our  description  of  Palenque  we  have  mentioned  one 
of  the  most  curious  of  all  the  reliefs — that  representing, 
according  to  Stephens,  women  with  children  in  their  arms. 
The  Oriental  survivals  would  seem  to  be  specially  strong  at 
Palenque,  and  it  would  not  surprise  us  if  in  these  women- 
figures  there  is  hidden  a  cogent  proof  of  the  origin  of 
America's  first  architects.  In  Buddhist  Art  in  India,  Professor 
A.  Griinwedel  writes  :  "At  Sikri,  Yusufzai,  excavated  by 
Major  H.  A.  Deane  in  1888,  was  found  a  statue  of  a  woman 
accompanied  by  three  children,  one  of  which  sits  astride 
of  her  right  hip  in  true  Indian  fashion,  and  which  she  is  about 
to  suckle.  Among  sculptures  at  Lahore  Museum  is  a  statue 
of  a  woman  completely  draped  and  holding  on  her  left  arm 
a  child.  It  is  suggested  that  these  are  forms  of  Haritri — 
'  Mother  of  the  Demons.'  She  was  the  mother  of  five  hundred 
demons  or  yakshas,  to  feed  whom  she  daily  stole  a  child. 
Buddha  rebuked  and  converted  her.  An  image  of  her  was 
found  sitting  in  the  porch  or  in  a  corner  of  the  dining-halls  of 
Indian  monasteries  holding  a  babe  in  her  arms."  Why  should 
not  the  Palenque  figure  be  a  representation  of  the  Hindu 
goddess  Haritri  ? 

A  still  more  remarkable  similarity  is  illustrated  by  a 
tower-like  building  at  Yaxchilan  into  which  is  let  at  about  the 
middle  a  huge  human  face.  This  queer  edifice  has  probably 
replicas  as  yet  undiscovered  in  the  forests  of  Guatemala.  If  it 
could  be  shown  to  have  a  counterpart  in  the  Malay  Peninsula, 
that  would  be  a  connecting-link  between  the  two  civilisations 
which  would  need  some  explaining  away,  would  it  not  ?  Well, 
we  have  traced  such  a  counterpart  just  where  it  ought  to 
occur,  if  our  theory  is  to  hold  good,  viz.  in  the  forests  of 
Cambodia.  At  Angkor  there  are  several  such  structures 
built  of  large  blocks  of  hewn  stone.  Of  these  extraordinary 
towers  M.  L.  Fournereau  in  Des  Ruines  d' Angkor  (Paris,  1890) 
gives  some  excellent  photographs.  It  would  need  a  bold  man 
to  say  that  the  fact  of  these  Cambodian  towers  having  such  a 
striking  replica  at  a  spot  near  the  earliest  settlements  of  our 
supposititious  Oriental  architects  is  due  to  coincidence. 

Then  there  are  the  curious  figures  carved  on  the  walls  of 
the  Nunnery  at  both  Chichen  and  Uxmal  and  on  other  Mayan 
ruins.     They  sit  cross-legged  in  Buddhistic  fashion  in  niches 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   273 

in  the  walls  surrounded  by  an  oval-shaped  ornamentation. 
These  are  like  the  images  in  the  niches  of  the  temples  of  all 
great  Buddhist  buildings ;  the  oval-shaped  ornamentation 
may  easily  be,  it  really  looks  exactly  hke,  the  aureole  which 
invariably  surrounds  the  jfigure  of  the  Buddha  at  Boro  Budor 
and  elsewhere.  Moreover  these  figures  in  Yucatan  have  a 
nimbus  too,  just  hke  the  Buddhas.  We  are  not  of  course 
endeavouring  to  show  that  the  Yucatecan  figures  represent 
Buddha  ;  but  we  are  suggesting  that  the  Oriental  pattern 
and  designs  for  religious  statuary  had  sunk  deep  into  the 
Mayan  mind. 

Though  the  sculptures  of  the  two  civiUsations  are  not,  as 
has  been  said,  strikingly  ahke  in  detail,  they  are  similar  in 
subjects.  They  represent,  for  the  most  part,  when  not  strictly 
religious,  processions,  battle-scenes,  and  pictures  of  the  daily 
Ufe  of  the  people.  There  are,  too,  bas-reliefs  showing  the 
conquered  submitting  to  the  conqueror,  the  details  being 
much  like  those  of  the  famous  carving  on  the  rock  at  Behistun. 
There  is  not  much  in  such  similarities,  as  the  carvings  of 
any  race  would  tend  to  be  stereotyped  in  a  common  form. 
Where  valuable  evidence  would  be  looked  for  is  in  the  fields 
of  rehgion  and  mythology.  So  far,  wherever  we  have  been 
able  to  show  similarities  between  the  architectures  of  America 
and  the  B^st,  Buddhism  has  been  the  prevailing  religion  of 
the  part  of  the  latter  in  question.  Do  we  then  find  any 
likeness  between  the  religion  of  the  Mayans  and  Buddhism  ? 

In  entering  upon  this  part  of  our  inquiry,  we  must 
remember  that  the  rehgion  of  a  mere  handful  of  invaders,  as 
we  must  presume  the  Oriental  builders  to  have  been,  would 
not  appeal  to  the  natives  so  much  as  would  their  arts.  When 
you  have  admitted  the  conservative  tendencies  of  all  peoples 
in  matters  religious,  it  gives  an  added  weight  to  any  genuine 
parallels  which  are  traceable  between  two  rehgions  in  such 
an  argument  as  the  present.  We  believe  we  can  show  such 
genuine  parallels  ;  but  first  we  must  refer  once  more  to  the 
suggestion  that  the  elephant  was  sacred  to  the  Mayans.  We 
have  shown  that  no  reliance  can  be  placed  on  the  zoological 
deductions  made  from  the  so-called  elephant-trunk  ornaments 
on  the  Mayan  buildings.  But  on  the  general  question,  the  fact 
that  the  elephant  has  apparently  never  been  indigenous  to 
America  would  seem  to  settle  the  matter.  No  race  has  ever 
been  shown  to  have  worshipped  an  animal  they  have  never 
actually  seen.     Some  writers  have  tried  to  prove  that  the 

t8 


274  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

elephant  or  its  congener,  the  mammoth,  existed  in  America 
contemporaneously  with  man.  Professor  Newberry,  in  an 
article  "The  Ancient  Lakes  of  Western  America"  {U.S. 
Geological  Survey  Report,  Washington,  1871),  writes  :  "  The 
elephant  and  mastodon  continued  to  inhabit  the  interior  of 
our  continent  long  after  the  glaciers  had  retreated  beyond  the 
upper  lakes,  and  when  the  minutest  details  of  surface  topo- 
graphy were  the  same  as  now.  ...  It  is  even  claimed  here 
as  on  the  European  continent  that  man  was  a  contemporary 
of  the  mammoth  and  that  here,  as  there,  he  contributed  largely 
to  its  final  extinction." 

For  this  view  there  would  seem  little  real  evidence.  The 
so-called  elephant  figures  dug  up  during  the  excavation  of 
mounds  in  Wisconsin  and  Iowa  in  1880,  although  declared  by 
their  finders  to  be  miniature  representations  of  elephants, 
have  no  tusks  and  are  far  more  like  the  tapir  of  Central  America. 
This  is  the  American  animal  nearest  approaching  in  form 
the  elephant  of  Asia.  That  the  tapir  was  worshipped  by  the 
Mayans  there  is  no  doubt :  ample  proof  exists.  It  is  certainly 
possible  enough  that  this  was  an  indigenous  cult,  and  cannot 
be  held  to  be  reminiscent  of  an  earher  worship  of  the  elephant. 
What  would  seem  to  militate  against  such  an  explanation  is 
the  nature  of  the  tapir.  Animal-worship  undoubtedly  arose  in 
the  majority  of  cases  from  one  of  two  motives  :  fear  or  gratitude 
for  utility.  The  former  motive  is  illustrated  in  the  adoration 
of  the  larger  carnivora  ;  while  the  worship  of  the  whale,  the 
horse,  and  the  cow  are  examples  of  the  latter.  But  the  tapir 
is  neither  feared  (he  is  very  shy,  has  no  tusks  or  other  means 
of  offence,  and  lives  entirely  in  the  swampy  woods,  never 
willingly  meeting  man) ;  nor  is  he  of  the  least  use,  though  it 
is  possible  his  flesh  has  on  occasions  been  eaten.  With  this, 
we  wiU  finally  leave  the  elephant-cult  question,  with  the 
suggestion  that  the  tapir  being  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  elephant  in  the  New  World,  may  have  been  adopted  as 
its  successor  by  the  invaders  and  afterwards  became  a  deity  of 
the  Mayans. 

Now  let  us  see  what  are  the  parallels  between  Buddhism 
and  the  Mayan  religion,  whether  in  legend,  doctrine,  or  ritual. 

The  Buddhist  priests  lived  during  certain  parts  of  the  year 
in  monasteries.  They  had  no  food  but  what  they  received 
from  the  people  ;  were  not  allowed  to  marry  ;  fasted  on  certain 
days  ;  and  spent  their  time  in  meditation,  writing  up  their 
reUgious  records,  and  teaching  the  people.    This  is  almost 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?    275 

the  precise  life  led  by  the  Mayan  priests.  They  lived  apart 
from  the  people  in  separate  houses,  and,  most  noteworthy  of 
all,  Acosta  in  his  Historia  de  los  Indios  says  that  they  lived 
entirely  by  begging,  or  rather  from  the  voluntary  contributions 
of  the  people. 

Of  the  Buddhist  monks.  Sir  Monier  Williams  in  his 
Buddhism,  p.  312,  describing  their  daily  Ufe,  writes :  "  Arranging 
themselves  in  line,  they  set  out  with  the  abbot  at  their  head 
to  receive  their  food.  Silently  they  move  on  through  the 
streets,  fixing  their  eyes  steadily  on  the  ground  six  feet  before 
them,  meditating  on  the  vanity  and  mutability  of  things, 
and  only  halting  when  a  layman  emerges  from  some  door 
to  pour  his  contribution  of  rice  or  fruit  or  vegetable  into  their 
alms  bowls." 

The  Mayan  priests  were  not  only  bound  to  cehbacy,  but 
they  were  never  allowed  to  come  into  contact  with  women. 
This  was  the  Buddhist  rule,  though  slowly  to  be  much 
relaxed.  Sir  Monier  WiUiams,  p.  152,  says,  "  There  is  evi- 
dence that  among  certain  monkish  communities  in  Northern 
countries  the  law  against  marriage  was  soon  relaxed.  It 
is  well  known  that  at  the  present  day  Lamaseries  in  Sikkim 
and  Thibet  swarm  with  children  of  monks,  though  called 
their  nephews  and  nieces."  A  further  curious  parallel  is 
that  women  took  part  in  the  ritual  of  both  Mayans  and  Budd- 
hists. Gautama  had  an  early  order  by  which  women  were 
admitted  to  nunneries  under  the  same  rules  as  men.  Among 
the  Mayans,  women  were  ministrants  in  the  temples,  as  at 
Isla  de  Mujeres,  while  at  Chichen,  Uxmal  and  other  cities, 
there  were  large  nuns'  houses. 

Sir  Monier  Williams  on  p.  83  says,  "  The  eating  at  mid- 
day the  one  meal  and  at  no  other  time  "  was  the  custom  of 
the  Buddhist  priests,  and  they  "  fasted  on  prescribed  days." 
H.  Bancroft,  in  his  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States  (1875-6, 
New  York),  says  that  among  the  priests  of  Mexico  "  fasting 
■was  observed  as  an  atonement  for  sin,  as  well  as  a  preparation 
for  solemn  festivals.  An  ordinary  fast  consisted  of  abstaining 
from  meat  for  a  period  of  one  to  ten  days,  and  taking  one  meal 
at  noon  ;  and  at  no  other  hour  could  so  much  as  a  drop  of 
water  be  touched."  Sir  Monier  WilUams  (p.  313)  says,  "  When 
the  midday  meal  is  over,  all  return  to  work.  Some  under- 
take the  teaching  of  the  boy  scholars.  Others  read  the  texts 
of  the  Tripitaka  with  their  commentaries,  or  superintend 
the  writers  who  are  copying  manuscripts.     Some  of  the  older 


276  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

members  sink  into  deep  meditation."  Father  Torquemada,  a 
leading  historian  of  Mexico,  tells  us  that  the  priests  "  passed 
much  of  their  time  in  contemplation  and  in  writing  the 
annals  of  the  country."  It  may  be  here  worth  mention  that 
the  Zapotecan  (Mayan)  priests  obtained  their  inspiration  by  a 
species  of  auto-suggestion  terminating  in  an  ecstatic  trance. 
This  would  certainly  seem  to  be  a  parallel  to  the  Buddhist 
trance. 

Sir  M.  Williams  on  p.  506  says,  "  Everywhere  throughout 
the  Buddhist  countries  the  supposed  impressions  of  the 
Buddha's  feet  are  as  much  honoured  as  those  of  the  god  Vishnu 
by  Vaishnavas.  .  .  .  No  true  Vaishnava  will  leave  his  house 
in  the  morning  without  marking  his  forehead  with  the  symbol 
of  Vishnu's  feet."  The  Jains  worship  the  footprint  on  Mount 
Parasnath  in  Bengal ;  while  there  are  sacred  footprints  of 
Buddha  at  Bharahat,  Sanchi,  Amaravati,  and  the  famous 
Adam's  Peak  in  Ceylon  and  at  Phra  Bat  in  Siam,  the  latter 
two  supposed  to  represent  the  right  and  left  feet  respectively 
as  he  stepped  in  one  stride  from  Ceylon  to  Siam. 

Now  it  is  a  very  strange  fact  that  there  is  this  legend  of 
sacred  footprints  in  America,  and  more  curiously  still,  the 
legend  associates  itself  with  the  East.  In  his  Hero  Myths, 
p.  220,  D.  G.  Brinton  says,  speaking  of  the  arts  of  the  Muycas 
of  New  Granada,  "  The  knowledge  of  these  various  arts  they 
attributed  to  the  instruction  of  a  wise  stranger  who  dwelt 
among  them  many  cycles  before  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 
He  came  from  the  East.  ...  In  the  province  of  Ubaque  his 
footprints  on  the  soUd  rock  were  reverently  pointed  out  long 
after  the  Conquest."  A  second  footprint  was  found  by  Dupaix 
at  Zachilla,  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Zapotecs,  a  Mayan  tribe  ; 
while  a  third  which  Brinton  examined  in  Nicaragua,  an  account 
of  which  is  given  in  his  The  Ancient  Footprints  in  Nicaragua, 
was  simply  the  footprint  of  an  ordinary  man  impressed  on 
volcanic  rock  before  the  lava  hardened.  Brinton  points  out 
•  that  the  foot  which  made  the  mark  was  sandalled,  showing 
that  it  was  done  by  a  native.  But  that  these  legendary  marks 
had  very  commonplace  origins  does  not  affect  the  curious 
community  of  legend  which  thus  appears  to  have  existed 
between  Central  America  and  Buddhist  lands. 

Many  minor  habits  and  customs  might  be  cited  to  show 
how  strangely  alike  the  Mayans  were,  and  still  are,  to  some 
Buddhist  peoples.  Thus  all  Mayan  mothers  carry  their  babies 
sitting  a-straddle  of  their  hips,  though  other  American  Indian 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?    277 

women  carry  the  little  ones  Apache-fashion  in  a  cradle-board, 
or  in  a  bundle  like  the  Mexican  Aztecs,  slung  on  their  backs ; 
and  this  carrying  on  the  hip,  peculiar  to  the  Mayans,  is  the 
invariable  manner  of  carrying  the  child  in  India,  Burma  and 
Siam  to-day.  Another  point  is  that  the  manuscripts  in  both 
countries  are  folded  pecuharly,  namely  in  a  zigzag  way. 
Dr.  Brinton  says  in  his  Maya  Chronicles  (1882),  "  The  Maya 
MSS.  consisted  of  one  long  sheet  of  a  kind  of  paper  made  by 
macerating  and  beating  together  the  leaves  of  the  maguey 
and  afterwards  sizing  the  surface  with  a  durable  white  varnish. 
The  sheet  was  folded  like  a  screen  [i.e.  zigzag)  forming  pages 
about  9x5  inches.  Both  sides  were  covered  with  figures 
and  characters  painted  in  various  brilliant  colours.  On  the 
outer  pages  boards  were  fastened  for  protection."  This 
might  be  an  account  of  the  Buddhist  olas  as  they  exist  to- 
day and  as  doubtless  they  have  always  existed. 

Again,  the  system  of  Castes — pecuhar  to  the  East  and 
unknown  to  the  North  American  Red  Indians — existed  among 
the  Mayans,  as  we  have  described  in  Chapter  XIV.  The 
ancient  Mayans,  too,  had  two  languages — one  for  use  in 
addressing  superiors  and  one  for  inferiors,  and  this  was  the 
case  in  Cambodia  and  Java. 

Many  minutest  customs  of  the  two  peoples  show  parallels 
which  are  hard  to  explain  except  as  the  result  of  intercourse. 
Thus  baby-girls  in  Java  wore  a  string  round  the  waist,  from 
which  hung  a  shell,  the  removal  of  which  during  maidenhood 
and  until  the  marriage  night  was  regarded  as  sinful.  This 
had  its  exact  repUca  among  the  Mayans,  whose  girl-children 
often  still  wear  the  shell.  The  Mayan  carvings  of  priests' 
figures  always  show  a  carved  medallion  of  jade  or  stone 
worn  hanging  by  a  chain  round  the  neck.  Almost  without 
exception  this  badge-like  ornament  hangs  round  the  neck  of 
the  ancient  Buddhist  figures  sculptured  in  the  East,  and  is 
said  to  be  still  worn  by  the  priests  in  Siam  and  Burma  to-day. 
In  the  East,  as  in  Mexico,  the  points  of  the  compass  were 
represented  by  colours,  though  it  is  not  proved  they  followed 
the  same  sequence.  In  Buddhist  countries  a  piece  of  green 
jade  is  sometimes  buried  with  the  dead,  and  this  has  been 
proved  to  have  been  a  Mayan  custom,  the  stone  being  thought 
to  have  magic  properties  in  speeding  the  deceased  to  another 
world.  Such  minute  similarity  of  custom  and  belief  as  is 
shown  by  these  examples  cannot  be  mere  coincidence. 
Taken  separately,  there  is    not  one  that   would  prove  the 


278  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

affinity  between  the  East  and  America  ;  but  when  taken 
together,   they  certainly  form  striking  evidence. 

But  there  is  one  thing  yet  lacking,  a  missing  link  in  the 
chain  of  evidence  binding  together  the  Buddhist  East  and 
Tropical  America.  Professor  E.  Morse,  in  his  paper  Was 
Middle  America  Peopled  from  Asia  ?  has  justly  pointed  out 
that  "to  go  straight  across  the  ocean  (Pacific)  is  one  matter, 
but  to  go  from  latitude  30°  on  one  side  of  the  Pacific  almost 
to  the  Arctic  Ocean  and  down  on  the  other  side  nearly  to 
the  Equator  is  quite  another  exploit."  Most  truly  said,  for 
such  a  voyage  is  possible,  but  most  improbable.  Those  who 
would  have  us  believe  that  Middle  America  was  peopled  from 
Asia  have  agreed  in  assuming  that  it  was  via  the  Behring 
Straits  or  the  Aleutian  Islands.  We  agree  with  Professor 
E.  Morse  (if  we  have  read  his  pamphlet  correctly)  that  if  some 
means  of  getting  Eastern  invaders  across  the  Pacific  and  not 
round  it  were  shown,  it  would  go  far  to  prove  the  Asiatic 
origin  of  Central  American  civilisation. 

The  Japan  Current  (Kuro  Siwa)  has  been  the  route 
accepted  by  all  who  believe  that  Central  American  civilisa- 
tion hails  from  Japan  and  China.  It  runs  swiftly  along  the 
coast  of  China  and  Japan  towards  the  Behring  Straits,  and 
there  bifurcates,  one  part  running  into  the  Arctic  Ocean 
and  the  other  turning  down  and  running  parallel  with  the 
coast  of  America.  This  current  has  proved  irresistibly 
attractive,  for  it  is  certain  that  those  swept  on  by  it  would 
have  land  in  sight  the  whole  way,  and  Charles  Waldcott 
Brooks  has  shown  in  his  report  to  the  California  Academy 
of  Science  on  the  Japanese  Vessels  wrecked  in  the  North 
Pacific  Ocean,  that  ships  from  Asia  could  easily  reach  the 
Oregon  and  Califomian  coasts  by  drifting,  as  he  has  proved 
in  the  case  of  several  derelicts. 

This  Japan  Current  is  such  a  simple  solution  of  the  thorny 
transit  problem  for  those  who  favour  the  Asiatic  theory,  that 
they  have  all  agreed  to  adopt  it,  and  have  never  been  able  to  tear 
themselves  away  from  it  for  a  moment  and  look  elsewhere. 
What  if  there  were  other  currents  ?  What  if  there  was  a 
direct  current  communication  between  the  Malaysian  portion 
of  Asia  and  Central  America  ?  We  take  no  credit  for  dis- 
covering currents.  We  have  simply  looked  to  see  whether,  if 
our  theory  is  otherwise  good,  the  invading  architects  would 
have  an  advantage  of  a  current  in  their  long  voyage.  And 
we  have  found  one. 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?   279 

The  prevailing  winds  blow  six  months  of  the  year  west 
to  east,  and  the  currents  would  seem  at  first  to  be  coast 
currents.  But  all  are  not  so.  There  is  the  great  Equatorial 
Current  rising  on  the  Peruvian  coast  (where  it  is  known  as 
the  Peru  Current)  between  south  latitude  30°  and  40°.  For 
a  time  it  keeps  by  the  coast,  running  in  a  N.N.W.  direction 
until  it  reaches  the  Equator,  where  it  turns  and  runs  in  an 
almost  direct  line  across  the  Pacific  between  the  Equator 
and  10°  south  latitude.  This  powerful  current  will  not,  of 
course,  serve  the  purpose  of  our  argument,  as  it  goes  in  the 
wrong  direction.  But  there  is  another  current  known  as  the 
Counter  Current,  running  north  of  the  Equator  east  to  west. 
It  is  first  noticeable  among  the  many  smaJl  island  currents  in 
the  Indian  Archipelago,  and  then  takes  a  course  to  the  E.S.E. 
of  Borneo  and  south  of  the  Philippines  and  out  into  the 
Pacific.  On  its  course  it  runs  through  the  Caroline  Islands 
and  the  Marshall  Group.  At  between  160°  and  170°  longitude 
west  Greenwich  it  is  reinforced  by  a  branch  of  the  southern 
Equatorial  Current  which  nms  swiftly  round  Christmas  and 
Fanning  Islands  and  turns  on  a  backward  course.  On  an 
average  its  rate  for  the  whole  distance  is  about  two  knots 
per  hour,  or  nearly  as  fast  as  the  Japan  Current.  It  spends 
itself  on  the  coast  of  Central  America  between  the  Equator 
and  10°  north  latitude,  part  of  it  turning  south  until  it  is 
swallowed  up  again  by  the  Equatorial  currents,  the  other 
half  turning  north  and  eventually  merging  into  the  Mexican 
Current  coming  down  from  the  north.  This  current  fulfils 
all  the  requirements  of  our  argument.  It  would  naturally 
land  emigrants  from  Malaysia  on  the  coast  of  Central  America 
between  10°  and  14°  north  latitude. 

The  most  ambitious  of  Sea  Migrations  in  early  times  are 
perhaps  those  of  the  Polynesians.  Starting,  it  is  assumed 
from  their  own  traditions,  from  Samoa,  their  present  distri- 
bution over  the  Southern  Pacific  shows  that  they  did  not 
hesitate  to  make  inunense  sea  journeys  under  circumstances 
which  to  our  modem  minds  seem  almost  impossible.  For 
the  Polynesians  had  no  boats  but  the  open  canoe  or  dug-out 
still  used  by  the  islanders  to-day.  These  Polynesian  migra- 
tions are  fact,  not  theory  ;  and  thus  when  we  come  to  reflect 
upon  the  problem  of  a  migration  from,  say,  Java  to  Central 
America,  we  begin  to  see  how  really  practicable  it  all  is.  For 
the  ships  in  the  East  were  not  dug-outs,  but  were  actually 
built  of  planks.     The  Chinese  traded  with  India  and  the 


28o  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Malaysian  islands  during  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries,  and 
used  decked  boats  for  the  trade.  They  knew  of  the  com- 
pass from  the  earliest  times,  and  actually  used  it  for 
navigation  from  the  third  and  fourth  centuries  onward. 
From  them  the  peoples  of  India  and  Malaysia  learnt  ship- 
building, if  they  had  not  already  developed  it.  Thus  our 
migrating  architects  would,  in  aU  probability,  have  quite 
decent-sized  vessels  in  which  they  could  make  the  voyage 
to  America. 

But  it  may  be  asked  what  impulse  to  migration  these 
peoples  could  have  had.  If  our  dates  are  accurate,  the  case 
is  a  fairly  clear  one.  Buddhism  started,  as  every  one  knows, 
in  India.  During  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  the  persecution 
of  the  Buddhists  began,  and  ended  finally  in  their  being  driven 
out  of  India.  As  an  early  result  of  the  movement  which  was 
bringing  about  their  expulsion,  they  established  themselves 
in  Burma.  Buddhism  was  acknowledged  in  China,  as  the 
third  religion  of  the  Empire,  as  early  as  65  a.d.  The  religion 
spread  into  the  Indian  Archipelago  soon  after  it  reached 
Burma  and  the  Malay  Peninsula,  and  the  building  of  the 
Buddhist  Temple  at  Boro  Budor  in  Java  was  begun  between 
600  and  700  A.D.,  though,  owing  to  wars  and  invasions,  it  was 
not  finished  until  about  1430. 

But  the  course  of  Buddhism  did  not  run  smooth  in  Java. 
The  Buddhist  settlers  were  involved  in  wars  with  neighbouring 
Malay  peoples,  and  the  building  of  the  great  temple  was,  it  is 
certain,  much  interrupted.  The  disturbed  condition  of  their 
tenure  would  tend  to  drive  some  of  the  settlers  into  fresh 
migration.  Probably  about  the  eighth  century  a  band  of 
these  undertook  a  voyage  in  search  of  a  new  home.  There  is 
ample  evidence  to  show  that  the  disturbed  state  of  Malaysia 
was  such  at  this  time  as  to  cause  constant  kaleidoscopic  changes 
of  population.  On  the  mainland  in  Cambodia,  Angkor  Vhat, 
which,  as  we  have  shown,  resembles  the  ruins  of  Central 
America,  was  probably  at  that  time  inhabited.  The  Khmers 
who  built  it  have  never  been  properly  traced.  They  were 
possibly  swallowed  up  in  the  great  racial  cataclysm  which  was 
then  taking  place  thereabouts.  Some  of  them  may  have  been 
driven  into  the  islands,  and  were  possibly  the  designers  of 
Boro  Budor.  Perhaps  the  band  of  immigrants  who  reached 
America  were  Khmers  ;  but  this,  of  course,  must  remain 
mere  surmise.  Our  theory  involves  the  assumption  that 
some  Eastern  people  professing  Buddhism,  and  skilled  in  the 


WHO  WERE  AMERICA'S  FIRST  ARCHITECTS  ?  281 

tjrpe  of  architecture  associated  with  early  Buddhist  buildings, 
did  reach  Central  America, 

We  have  tried  to  show  that  such  a  voyage  was  possible, 
and  now  let  us  follow  their  route.  Taking  Java  as  their  start- 
ing-point, we  have  shown  how  the  currents  cross  the  Pacific 
to  the  Carohne  Islands.  This  group,  Ijdng  directly  in  the 
course  of  a  migrating  people,  would  be  certain  to  be  a  resting- 
place  on  their  journey.  They  might,  perhaps,  stay  some 
weeks,  perhaps  months  there,  possibly  leaving  some  of  their 
number  behind  them  when  they  finally  started  out  again. 
Here,  then,  one  would  expect  to  find  some  trace  of  their  culture, 
and  that  is  exactly  what  we  do  find.  There  are  architectural 
remains  in  the  CaroUnes,  though  these  have  never  yet  been 
properly  studied.  But  there  is  evidence  that  they  are  just 
such  relics  as  we  should  expect  of  the  men  who  were  to  be 
the  tutors  of  the  Mayans.  F.  W.  Christian,  in  his  book  The 
Caroline  Islands  (London,  1899),  says  on  p.  80,  speaking  of 
the  ruins  on  the  east  coast  of  Ponape,  "  Somewhat  similar  in 
character  would  be  the  semi-Indian  ruins  of  Java  and  the 
Cyclopean  structures  of  Ak6  and  Chichen  Itza  in  Yucatan. 
A  series  of  huge  rude  steps  brings  us  into  a  spacious  court- 
yard, strewn  with  fragments  of  fallen  pillars,  encircling  a 
second  terraced  enclosure  with  a  projecting  frieze  or  cornice 
of  somewhat  Japanese  type."  The  tradition  of  the  Ponapeans 
in  regard  to  these  ruins  is,  Mr.  Christian  tells  us,  "  Two  brothers, 
Ani-Aramach,  Godmen  or  Heroes,  named  Olo-chipa  and  Olo- 
chopa,  coming  from  the  direction  of  Chokach,  built  the  break- 
water of  Nan-Moluchai  and  the  island  city  it  shuts  in.  By 
their  magic  spells  one  by  one  the  great  masses  of  stone  flew 
through  the  air  like  birds,  settling  down  into  their  appointed 
place." 

From  the  photographs  reproduced  by  Mr.  Christian  it 
would  seem  that  the  ruins  were  distinctive  of  no  special  type 
of  architecture,  but  were  such  as  one  would  expect  to  be  put 
up  by  those  who  had  only  made  the  islands  their  home  for  a 
very  short  period,  or,  as  is  far  more  likely,  did  not  even  stop 
to  build  but  imparted  a  shght  knowledge  to  the  natives,  whose 
subsequent  productions  would  be  thus  uncouth.  Their  next 
halting-place  would  be  the  Marshall  Islands,  but  whether 
there  are  any  ruins  there  we  do  not  know.  It  is  almost  next 
to  certain  that  intelligent  search  would  reveal  such. 

The  distance  between  Java  and  the  coast  of  Central  America 
at  the  point  which  we  wish  to  indicate  as  the  likely  landing- 


282  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

place  is  about  9,000  miles.  The  Caroline  Islands  are  about 
700  miles  from  the  south-east  comer  of  the  Philippines,  the 
last  sight  of  land  a  people  migrating  from  Java  by  the  route 
we  adopt  would  get.  The  Carolines  would  be  in  their  route 
for  1,500  miles,  as  this  archipelago  is  a  specially  widespread 
one.  From  the  Carolines  to  the  Marshall  Islands  is  about 
450  miles ;  and  then  on  to  the  American  coast  is  about  6,000 
miles,  with  the  smaller  unnamed  islands  lying  north  of 
Christmas  Island  between  longitude  160°  and  175°  west  of 
Greenwich  intervening  for  about  1,000  miles  of  their  course. 
Between  this  point  and  the  American  coast  would  be  the 
longest  stretch  of  open  sea  the  migrators  would  have  to  face. 
We  do  not  suggest  that  they  would  come  over  in  great 
numbers.  They  followed  the  course  of  the  current  to  America, 
and  would  be  thrown  on  the  coast  where  it  struck  in  its  greatest 
force.  The  Pacific  Counter  Current  turns  off  into  two  branches 
on  nearing  the  coast  at  about  10°  north  latitude,  part  going  to 
the  south  and  part  north.  If  they  took  the  southern  branch 
they  would  come  in  contact  with  the  Equatorial  Current 
coming  up  from  Peru,  and  inevitably  be  carried  out  to  sea 
again.  On  the  other  hand,  if  they  took  the  northern  branch, 
they  would  be  carried  for  some  miles  along  the  coast  until 
about  latitude  13°,  where  the  current  runs  in  closest,  and 
there  would  be  the  most  probable  spot  for  them  to  land. 


CHAPTER    XVII 

THE  AGE   OF  THE   RUINS 

THE  very  natural  temptation  to  assign  a  romantically 
great  age  to  the  ruins  of  Central  America  has  proved 
too  much  for  most  writers  and  students  of  the  subject.  We, 
too,  would  hke  to  think  that  these  Mayan  buildings  rival  in 
antiquity  those  of  Egypt ;  but  we  have  been  unable  to  blind 
ourselves  to  certain  facts,  which  are  as  commonplace  as  they 
are  convincing.  The  proper  way  to  judge  the  age  of  a  building 
is  not  to  stand  in  front  of  it  in  an  attitude  of  reverence  like  a 
pre-RaphaeUte  before  an  Old  Master,  but  to  look  at  it  with  the 
critical  eye  of  a  mason,  if  you  can.  If  you  are  not  a  mason, 
or  know  nothing  about  masonry,  then  you  should  take  an 
expert  with  you.  If  the  many  students  of  Mayan  edifices 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  put  them  to  this  very  simple  test, 
noting  how  they  were  built,  and  then  making  due  aUowance 
for  the  friabiUty  of  the  material  and  so  on,  we  should  have 
heard  less  of  the  fairy  tales  which  have  gained  undeserved 
currency  in  past  years. 

If  the  theory  which  we  have  put  forward  in  our  last  chapter 
is  as  sound  as  we  believe  it  to  be,  it  would  seem  satisfactorily  to 
fix  a  maximum  date  for  Central  American  buildings.  But 
we  cannot  too  emphatically  point  out  that  our  view  as  to  the 
age  of  the  ruins  has  not  been  evolved  to  suit  our  theory  as 
to  who  were  America's  first  architects,  but  is  based  upon 
entirely  practical  tests  which  are  by  their  nature  final. 

We  have  imagined  that  the  architects  reached  the  coast  of 
Central  America  at  about  13°  north  latitude.  It  is  probable  that 
they  would  not  begin  to  build  directly  they  landed,  but  would 
first  look  for  a  suitable  site  on  which  they  might  found  a  settle- 
ment. They  possibly  numbered  two  or  three  hundred  ;  more 
than  this  is  most  unlikely.  In  such  small  numbers  they  could 
not  possess  themselves  of  any  likely  spot  irrespective  of  the 
American  tribes  already  inhabiting  the  country.    The  chance 

283 


284  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

is  that  it  was  some  little  while  before  they  finally  founded  a 
city.  But  somewhere  within  reasonable  distance  of  the  por- 
tion of  the  coast  where  they  would  be  most  likely  to  land, 
we  ought  to  find  ruins  having  all  the  chief  characteristics  of 
their  architecture,  with  figures  for  the  most  part  typical  of 
their  race  in  face  and  feature,  in  costume  and  ornament,  and 
such  ruins  should  be  very  distinctly  differentiated  from  those 
deeper  in  the  country,  and  erected  after  the  invaders  had 
been  some  time  in  contact  with  the  natives,  whose  own  mode 
of  living  and  disposition  would  modify  the  orientalism  of  the 
designs. 

And  this  is  precisely  what  we  do  find.  We  find  that  Copan 
is  well  within  150  miles  of  the  site  of  their  probable  landing. 
Here,  as  we  pointed  out  on  p.  268,  are  carvings  so  strikingly 
Oriental  that  one  cannot  doubt  their  origin.  The  faces  of 
the  figures  on  the  stelae  are  the  faces  one  can  see  to-day 
in  Cambodia  and  Siam.  The  dress,  the  ornamentation,  the 
turban-shaped  headdress  (found  on  no  other  carvings  but 
these)  are  all  purely  ancient  Indo-Chinese.  Couple  all  this  with 
the  fact  that  nowhere  else  have  the  counterparts  of  the  peculiar 
monuments  of  Copan  been  found  in  Central  America  except 
at  Quirigua,  which,  but  a  few  miles  distant,  was  probably 
almost  synchronous  in  its  building,  and  it  must  be  admitted 
that  there  is  much  in  our  suggestion  ;  and  that  here  we  are 
able  to  locate  one  of  their  earliest,  if  not  actually  their  earliest, 
settlement. 

The  traditions  of  the  Mayans  all  agree  that  Copan  was 
built  by  the  Itzas,  the  tribe  inhabiting  Chichen,  who  had 
temporarily  migrated  thence.  If  this  tradition  is  true,  then 
why  do  we  not  find  the  same  characteristic  monuments  in 
both  places  ?  As  far  as  architectural  ornamentation  and 
monuments  are  concerned,  no  two  sets  of  ruins  could  be  further 
apart.  At  Copan  we  find  a  uniform  type  in  costume  and 
feature.  There  is  not  a  single  sign  of  a  warrior  or  the  feathered 
headdress  common  in  aU  the  monuments  of  Yucatan.  The 
battle  scenes  characteristic  of  Mayan  carvings  are  entirely 
lacking.  But  what  of  Chichen  ?  In  all  the  carvings  there 
you  do  not  find  one  that  resembles  in  the  least  those 
at  Copan.  The  features  are  the  features  of  another  race  ; 
and  there  is  not  a  suggestion  of  the  Copan  headdress,  but 
all  the  figures  wear  the  befeathered  American-Indian  type. 
The  scenes  in  the  bas-reliefs  and  paintings  invariably  depict 
warriors  in  battle  array. 


SIELAE    AT    COPAN,    GUATEMALA. 


p.   284] 


THE   AGE   OF   THE    RUINS  285 

In  regard  to  the  monuments  themselves,  a  peculiar  feature 
of  the  ruins  of  Angkor  are  the  gigantic  heads  without  bodies 
which  stand  in  the  woods,  and  which  have  their  counter- 
parts in  the  heads  found  at  Copan,  one  of  which,  according 
to  Stephens,  measures  about  six  feet  in  height.  The  carvings 
at  Copan  reached  a  height  of  elaboration  and  nicety  of  exe- 
cution such  as  has  obviously  never  been  reached  elsewhere  in 
Central  America.  Wonderful  as  the  carvings  at  Chichen, 
and  Palenque  even,  are,  they  are  not  nearly  so  artistically 
wonderful  as  those  at  Copan.  Yet  if  we  are  to  believe  tra- 
dition, Chichen  of  to-day  was  built  on  the  return  of  the  Itzas 
after  they  had  founded  Copan.  To  our  mind  the  only  way 
to  explain  the  pecuhar  and  intricate  art  of  Copan  is  to  assume 
that  it  was  the  first  settlement  or  one  of  the  first  settlements 
of  the  invading  builders,  and  thus  that  it  is  where  we  have  their 
art  in  its  purest  and  most  unadulterated  form.  There  is  sound 
reason  to  think  that  most  of  the  carvings  in  the  ruins  of  Central 
America  were  done  by  the  hands  of  American  Indians.  There 
is  no  room  for  such  a  belief  as  to  Copan  and  Quirigua.  No 
American  Indians  could  have  carved  the  stelae  there,  if  their 
general  work  is  to  be  taken  as  a  standard  of  the  excellence 
they  attained.  No ;  the  invaders  carved  and  built  Copan 
themselves,  and  probably  they  were  watched  at  their  work 
by  the  neighbouring  Indians  who  crowded  in  to  see  the  new 
wonder  and  learn  the  art. 

What  the  shapes  of  the  buildings  at  Copan  and  Quirigua 
were  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But  the  ground  plan  of  the  former 
at  least  can  be  fairly  accurately  traced,  and  it  affords  valuable 
evidence  of  our  theory.  According  to  Stephens,  the  main 
ruins  consist  of  an  oblong  enclosure  624  feet  long  and  some 
500  feet  broad.  The  river  wall  of  sixty  to  ninety  feet  in  height 
is  of  cut  stones.  The  other  three  sides  of  this  enclosure  con- 
sist of  ranges  of  steps  and  pyramidal  structures.  Near  the 
south-west  comer  he  found  a  recess  once  occupied  by  a  colossal 
figure  and  beyond  traces  of  a  principal  gateway,  while  other 
gateways  existed  on  the  other  sides.  Of  the  Buddhist  ruins 
of  Brambanan,  Java,  Crawfurd  {Hist.  Indian  Archipelago, 
p.  196)  writes  :  "  They  occupy  an  area,  which  is  an  oblong 
square,  of  600  English  feet  long  and  550  broad.  They  con- 
sist of  four  rows  of  small  temples,  enclosing  in  the  centre  a 
greater  one,  whose  height  is  60  feet.  The  temples  are  pyra- 
midal buildings,  all  of  the  same  character,  covered  by  a  pro- 
fusion  of  sculpture  and  consisting  of  large  blocks  of  hewn 


286  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

stone.  To  the  whole  group  of  temples  there  are  four  entrances 
facing  the  cardinal  points  of  the  compass,  and  each  guarded 
by  two  gigantic  figures."  Such  an  identity  of  ground  plan  is 
surely  most  suggestive. 

It  is  but  in  perfect  consonance  with  the  age  which  we 
have  assigned  to  Copan  and  Quirigua  that  their  edifices  should 
have  fallen  to  pieces.  That  they  had  fallen  at  the  time  of 
the  Conquest  is  clear  from  the  letter  of  Diego  Garcia  de 
Palacio,  a  member  of  the  Audiencia  de  Guatemala,  addressed 
to  Philip  II.  of  Spain  on  March  8,  1576.  It  runs  :  "  On  the 
road  to  the  city  of  San  Pedro,  in  the  first  town  within  the 
province  of  Honduras,  called  Copan,  are  certain  ruins  and 
vestiges  of  a  great  population  and  of  superb  edifices  of  splendour 
as  it  would  appear  they  never  could  have  been  built  by  the 
natives  of  that  province."  From  this  it  would  seem  that  not 
a  building  was  intact  at  Copan  in  the  sixteenth  century.  To- 
day the  remains  are  crumbling  heaps  of  pyramids  and  terraces 
overgrown  by  luxuriant  vegetation.  All  that  remains  intact 
are  the  monolithic  stelae  and  altars  which  will  last  for  ever, 
though  their  carvings  will  yield  to  time. 

Wherever  other  cities  have  been  spoken  of  by  historians, 
they  lead  us  to  infer  that  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest  the 
buildings  were  still  intact.  It  is  a  truism  to  say  that  the 
most  recently  built  are  the  best  preserved  ;  but  students  of 
Mayan  archieology  have  betrayed  an  extraordinary  gift  for 
overlooking  the  obvious.  Chichen,  for  instance,  is  still  in 
a  good  state  of  preservation,  perhaps  the  best  of  all  Yuca- 
tecan  cities,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  was  one  of  the 
most  recently  built,  and  for  no  other  reason  whatever.  Mr. 
A.  P.  Maudslay,  who  has  spent  more  time  than  any  one 
else  on  a  study  of  Copan  and  Quirigua,  assigns  to  them  the 
position  of  the  earliest  of  all  ruined  cities  of  Central  America. 
This  judgment  he  no  doubt  based  upon  their  decayed  con- 
dition. But  neither  Mr.  Maudslay  nor  any  one  else  has 
explained  why  the  art  of  carving  had  reached  such  a  high 
stage  at  such  an  early  date  ;  and  all  have  overlooked,  or  shut 
their  eyes  to,  the  undoubted  fact  that  the  carvings  of  the 
finest  of  the  well-preserved  cities,  such  as  Chichen,  are  in 
merit  behind  and  not  in  advance  of  those  of  Copan  and  Qui- 
rigua. To  us  it  appears  there  is  but  one  explanation  of  this 
fact,  and  that  is  the  one  which  we  have  suggested. 

For  these  reasons  we  venture  to  urge  that  Copan  and 
Quirigua  were  practically  contemporaneous  with  the  advent 


THE   AGE   OF   THE    RUINS  287 

of  the  builders  from  Indo-China  and  Java,  namely,  some  time 
during  the  eighth  century.  How  tlie  art  of  building  spread 
from  Copan  and  Quirigua  it  is  of  course  impossible  to  say. 
It  can  never  be  known  whether  the  Eastern  immigrants,  after 
building  these  two  cities  and  possibly  others  undiscovered 
near  at  hand,  advanced  fiuther  into  the  country,  teaching 
the  natives  their  arts  and  crafts,  and  perhaps  indoctrinating 
them  with  some  of  their  religious  tenets  and  ritual ;  or  whether 
they  were  visited  by  interested  Mayan  chiefs  who  learnt  some- 
thing of  building  on  the  spot.  Possibly,  too,  they  may  have 
been  attacked  and  some  of  them  captured  and  taken  captive 
to  Mayan  cities,  and  forced  to  superintend  building  operations 
there.  But  it  is  most  probable  that  they  did  advance  further 
into  the  country.  Once  they  had  learnt  something  of  the 
language,  there  would  be  few  or  no  difficulties  for  them  in 
making  friends  with  the  Mayan  peoples  around. 

If  our  theory  is  right,  we  ought  to  find  a  chain  of  towns 
marking  their  progress,  or  the  progress  of  their  art,  over  the 
country.  This  is  just  what  we  do  find  in  the  group  of  ruins 
on  the  Usumacinta  River  of  which  we  have  already  given  a 
short  account.  The  first  of  these  is  the  city  of  Piedras  Negras, 
the  nearest  large  city  to  Copan.  Here  the  characteristic 
Orientalism  is  already  on  the  wane.  The  carvings  of  the 
buildings  are  not  so  strikingly  characteristic  of  the  East  as 
are  those  at  Copan.  These  have  given  place  to  carvings  more 
in  keeping  with  native  ideas.  It  is  no  longer  the  city  of  the 
"  builders,"  but  a  city  the  building  of  which  is  superintended 
by  them.  Yet  one  would  expect  some  Oriental  features  to 
creep  in  ;  and  this  expectation  is  fulfilled.  The  figure  found 
there  by  Herr  Teobert  Maler,  and  already  mentioned  by 
us  on  p.  271,  is  as  near  a  replica  of  the  Buddhist  statues 
of  the  East  as  one  could  expect  a  people  to  remember  after 
they  had  spent  several  years  in  a  new  country.  Its  costume, 
its  posture,  its  features,  and  its  whole  attitude  take  one  to  the 
East.  Indeed  the  only  way  of  explaining  the  statue  is  to 
believe  that  its  sculptors  came  from  Buddhist  lands.  Close  at 
hand,  at  the  neighbouring  ruins  of  Yaxchilan,  is  the  structure 
which  we  have  described  on  p.  272,  and  which  in  the  same 
way  can  only  be  explained  by  looking  towards  the  East  for 
its  artificers.  This  tower  with  the  great  staring  face  built 
into  it  is  almost  a  replica  of  the  towers  of  Angkor,  solid  pieces 
of  masonry  with  faces  carved  upon  them.  The  only  difference 
between  them  and  that  of  Yaxchilan  is  that  they  are  cut  from 


288  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

solid  stone  while  that  of  the  latter  is  stucco.  Whether  it  is 
carved  in  stone  under  the  stucco  we  cannot  say.  We  believe 
that  this  monument  found  at  Yaxchilan  is  the  only  one  of  its 
kind  so  far  discovered  in  Central  .\merica. 

Following  the  imaginary  line  of  advance  of  the  Eastern 
builders,  we  find  the  proofs  of  our  theory  accumulating.  At 
Menche  we  have  another  city,  to  which  M.  Charnay  attempted 
to  give  the  name  of  "  Lorillard."  Here  he  and  Mr.  Maudslay 
(who  was  the  discoverer  of  the  place)  appear  to  have  found 
little  which  could  be  regarded  as  a  trace  of  the  Copan  builders. 
Possibly  the  explanation  is  that,  not  attempting  to  trace  the 
building  civilisation  from  Copan  as  a  starting  place,  they 
overlooked  much  valuable  evidence  ;  or  possibly  Menche  was 
built  at  a  much  later  date  when  the  Oriental  ideas  had  almost 
entirely  vanished  in  favour  of  native  design. 

But  at  Palenque,  the  next  big  city,  we  again  find  traces 
of  the  East.  While  the  smaller  buildings  are  strikingly  hke 
those  in  ruins  at  Pr6a-Khane  and  elsewhere  in  Cambodia, 
the  so-called  "  Palace  "  has  often  been  said,  as  we  mentioned 
in  our  last  chapter,  to  be  almost  a  replica  in  arrangement 
and  design  of  Boro  Budor.  It  may  very  well  be  that  some 
of  the  very  men  who  had  assisted  in  the  earher  building 
operations  of  Boro  Budor  were  the  architects  of  the  build- 
ing at  Palenque.  Such  differences  as  occur  between  the 
two  are  easily  explained.  In  the  seventh  century  the  statues  of 
Buddha  which  now  adorn  the  terraces  of  this  Javanese  Mecca 
did  not  exist.  Only  the  roughest  plan  of  the  present  Boro 
Budor  was  laid  down  and  worked  on  in  those  early  days, 
and  thus  the  Palenque  Palace  is  a  reproduction  of  what  Boro 
Budor  was  centuries  before  its  final  completion. 

But  even  with  these  distinctions  the  two  ruins  are  closely 
akin.  The  two-storeyed  tower  on  the  roof  of  Boro  Budor  has 
its  exact  counterpart  in  the  Palenque  tower  save  that  the  former 
has  a  dome-shaped  roof  while  the  latter  is  flat.  But  it  may 
not  always  have  been  so.  In  describing  it,  we  called  attention 
to  the  curious  fact  that  the  tower  has  a  stairway  which  ends 
abruptly  against  this  flat  roof.  Is  it  not  possible  that  the 
stairway  once  led  into  a  dome-shaped  roof  which  either  fell 
or  was  actually  demolished  and  replaced  by  the  flat  one, 
which  renders  the  stairway  so  futile  ?  ^  At  Palenque,  too,  we 
first  find  what  looks  like  a  reproduction  of  the  "  lion  seat  " 

1  It  might  be  worth  while  here  to  note  that  Stephens  declared 
he  found  at  Copan  the  remains  of  two  circular  towers  with  stairs. 


THE   AGE    OF   THE    RUINS  289 

which  is  so  characteristic  of  many  of  the  early  Buddhist 
statues.  In  one  of  the  temples  at  Palenque  is  the  carving  of 
a  couch  which  is  almost  a  rephca  of  those  found  in  Buddhist 
temples.  Another  noteworthy  feature  is  the  ornamental 
disc  or  amulet  hanging  on  the  breast  of  the  deity  which  would 
appear  to  be  exactly  like  that  on  the  ancient  Buddhist  figures 
and  the  priestly  badge  of  office  worn  in  Siam  and  Burma 
to-day.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  according  to  P.  Schellhas 
(Biureau  of  American  Ethnology,  Bulletin  28  :  Washington, 
1904)  this  badge  never  figures  in  the  Mexican  manuscripts, 
and  thus  may  be  presumed  to  have  never  been  adopted  by 
the  Aztecs  but  to  have  been  in  vogue  only  among  the  Mayans 
who  came  into  direct  contact  with  the  Oriental  invaders. 

Probably  Piedras  Negras,  Yaxchilan  and  Palenque  re- 
present, together  with  some  undiscovered  ruins,  a  period  of 
about  half  a  century  immediately  succeeding  the  founding  of 
Copan  and  Quirigua.  During  this  period  it  may  be  taken 
for  granted  that  many  of  the  older  immigrants  had  died  and 
the  renmant  would  be  old  men.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  in 
half  a  century  the  strangers  would  have  penetrated  far  into 
Yucatan  or  reached  the  plateau  of  Mexico.  Their  activities 
would  have  been  centred  around  the  Palenque  district,  and 
the  decayed  condition  of  this  latter  city  and  the  neighbouring 
ruins  of  Yaxchilan  and  Piedras  Negras  would  without  doubt 
seem  to  definitely  place  them  in  this  period.  Palenque,  we 
would  suggest,  was  the  last  large  city  built  or  designed  by  these 
peoples. 

Thus  far  we  have  the  most  marked  traces  of  Orientalism. 
Copan  was  probably  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  early  cities 
of  Cambodia  and  Ceylon,  as  Palenque  would  seem  to  be  a 
replica  of  seventh-century  Boro  Budor.  With  the  practical  ex- 
tinction of  the  foreign  builders  the  art  would  take  upon  itself, 
in  the  matter  of  decoration,  a  purely  native  character.  Many 
ornamental  ideas  would,  however,  recommend  themselves  to 
the  caciques,  as,  for  instance,  the  lion  seat,  which,  changed  to 
represent  the  Central  American  jaguar,  an  animal  probably 
held  in  veneration,  would  figure  in  the  carvings.  It  is  easy 
to  imagine  how  the  building  art  spread  from  Palenque.  There 
would  probably  be  two  lines  of  advance  :  one  through  Chiapas 
into  the  Zapotec  country  and  so  on  to  the  tableland  of  Mexico  ; 
and  one  up  to  Honduras  and  so  to  Yucatan.  By  the  ninth 
century  it  would  have  reached  Chichen  Itza  on  the  one  hand 
and  possibly  spread  as  far  north  as  the  city  of  Tula  in  Mexico. 

19 


290  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

From  the  earliest  times  Chichen  must  have  been  one  of  the 
most  populous  centres  in  Yucatan.  The  water  problem  is 
even  to-day  the  greatest  social  and  economic  factor  in  the 
Peninsula  ;  and  the  existence  of  two  huge  natural  reservoirs 
such  as  the  cenotes  at  Chichen  must  have  meant  an  importance 
for  the  spot  from  the  remotest  times.  When  building  was 
introduced  into  the  country  the  cacique  of  Chichen  probably 
ranked  high  among  the  chiefs,  and  he  would  be  sure  to  hear 
early  of  the  marvellous  buildings  of  stone  that  were  being 
erected  at  Copan.  Probably  he  might  make  a  journey  thither, 
while  the  builders  of  Copan  were  still  living.  Possibly  he  might 
invite  some  of  them  to  Chichen  to  instruct  his  people  in  the  art. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  there  would  seem  to  be  at  least  two 
distinct  ages  represented  in  the  ruins  of  Chichen.  The  build- 
ings still  standing  belong  to  a  later  period  than  those  which 
crowned  the  now  ruined  mounds  to  the  east  and  the  south- 
east of  the  Castillo.  These  latter  represent  the  old  Chichen, 
built  probably  within  a  century  of  the  arrival  of  the  builders. 
They  show  signs  of  having  gone  to  pieces  through  natural 
decay  rather  than  having  been  demolished  by  man,  as  in 
war.  On  excavation  of  the  mounds,  the  walls  and  pillars  of 
these  buildings  prove  to  be  in  fair  preservation.  With  scarcely 
an  exception,  it  would  seem  that  the  faU  of  the  roof  has  been 
the  real  cause  of  the  destruction  of  each  edifice.  The  roofs 
in  Mayan  buildings  are  always  the  weakest  spot.  Buildings 
which  have  been  destroyed  by  a  conquering  people  generally 
bear  ample  traces  of  such  destruction.  In  the  same  way, 
buildings  which  have  fallen  through  a  natural  process  of  decay 
demonstrate  this  fact  by  the  state  of  their  ruin.  The  buildings 
that  stood  on  the  mounds  at  Chichen  have  fallen  before  the 
hand  of  Time.  If  a  conquering  tribe  had  taken  Chichen  from 
the  Itzas  they  would  not  have  destroyed  their  buildings,  but 
would  have  used  them  as  did  the  Spaniards  under  Montejo. 
It  was  no  case  of  modem  artillery,  when  the  buildings  would 
naturally  fall  or  be  damaged  in  the  conflict.  The  most  de- 
structive weapon  the  Indians  had  was  the  spear  of  hardened 
wood  or  tipped  with  flint,  and  to  attempt  to  destroy  buildings 
as  solid  as  those  of  Chichen  with  such  implements  would  be 
about  as  great  a  task  as  an  attempt  to  cut  a  full-sized  croquet 
lawn  with  a  pair  of  nail  scissors.  For  these  reasons  we  venture 
to  date  the  oldest  buildings  at  Chichen  about  the  ninth  century, 
and  we  believe  that  our  estimate  would  be  corroborated  by 
any  expert  architect. 


THE   AGE   OF   THE    RUINS  291 

The  later  buildings  are  of  far  more  recent  date  ;  but 
perhaps  here  it  would  be  well  to  describe  the  mode  of  building 
and  thus  explain  our  reasons  for  modernising  Chichen.  To 
be  technical,  the  first  part  to  examine  in  a  building  is  its 
foundations.  The  ruins  of  Yucatan  appear  to  lack  nothing 
of  sohdity  in  this  matter.  Usually  they  are  founded  on 
truncated  pyramids  which  when  intact  would  appear  to  be 
cut  from  soUd  rock.  They  are  however  not  built,  like  the 
pyramids  of  Egypt,  of  solid  blocks  of  stone,  but  are  simply 
faced  with  stone  slabs  only  a  few  inches  thick.  Beneath 
these  the  pyramid  is  formed  of  loose  building  rubble  and  earth. 
The  Chichen  Castillo  is  a  good  example  of  Mayan  building 
methods.  The  limestone  slabs  forming  the  face  of  the  pyramid 
are  less  than  a  foot  thick.  Beneath  them  is  loose  rubble. 
Thus  should  one  of  these  facing  slabs  work  out  of  place,  when 
the  wet  season  came  the  rain  would  get  in  behind  the  slabs 
and  quickly  move  the  ones  below  out  of  their  positions.  The 
earth  and  rubble  would  be  washed  away  in  the  wet  season 
and  crumbled  away  in  the  hot  season,  until  in  a  few  years 
there  would  be  a  perfect  avalanche  of  these  slabs  from  the 
top,  falling,  for  lack  of  support,  like  a  pack  of  cards.  The 
stairway  at  the  Castillo  is  formed  of  blocks  of  stone  let  but  a 
short  way  into  the  pyramids.  The  consequence  is  that  not  one 
of  the  four  stairways  as  built  by  the  Indians  could  be  ascended 
to-day  unless  you  were  an  Alpine  climber  willing  to  risk 
broken  limbs. 

All  the  other  buildings  at  Chichen  illustrate  the  same  care- 
less methods  of  construction. 

The  Nunnery  was  built,  as  we  have  stated  on  page  loi, 
at  different  periods  or  else  the  original  design  was  added  to. 
On  the  north  side  is  a  hole  that  has  been  made  in  the 
structure  by  a  former  owner  of  the  Chichen  hacienda.  This 
hole  shows  that  the  building  is  of  the  same  material  as  the 
Castillo,  but  built  in  a  different  way.  Being  perpendicular 
it  was  impossible  to  face  it,  as  was  the  Castillo,  after  the 
rubble  had  been  put  in  position.  The  walls  must  have 
been  built  first  and  the  inside  filled  in  afterwards.  That 
this  was  the  case  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  wall  is  separate 
and  not  faced  on  to  the  rubble  in  any  way.  The  fallen  south- 
west comer  in  like  maimer  shows  how  the  addition  co  the 
building  was  made.  A  wall  was  built  out  the  desired  distance 
from  the  main  structure  and  the  space  between  the  two  filled 
up  with  rubble  and  earth.     It  will  be  obvious  to  every  reader 


293  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

that  this  mode  of  building  was  a  weak  one.  The  heavy 
weight  of  loose  nibble  and  earth  enclosed  in  a  wall  between 
two  and  three  feet  thick  was  not  a  very  substantial  foundation 
for  a  heavy  building.  Naturally  the  tendency  would  be  for 
the  walls  to  bulge  and  crack,  spelling  ruin  to  the  whole  building. 

But  now  let  us  turn  from  the  foundations  to  the  buildings 
themselves.  Mr.  Henry  C.  Mercer,  in  his  book  Hill  Caves  of 
Yucatan  (Philadelphia,  1896),  is  very  outspoken  on  this  subject. 
On  p.  95  he  says,  "  The  more  we  examined  the  walls  the 
more  we  wondered  not  so  much  at  their  antiquity  as  at  the 
fact  that  they  had  not  already  crumbled  to  the  ground.  .  .  . 
A  facing  of  blocks  shaped  like  the  letter  V  pushed  mosaic- 
fashion  into  a  central  pudding-like  concrete  of  stone  and 
mortar  was  a  weak  form  of  construction.  Neither  were  the 
face  stones  interlocked  systematically  so  as  to  bind  the  joints. 
Everything  was  slipping  out  of  place.  No  wonder  there  were 
fresh  cracks  in  the  walls,  that  whole  fagades  had  tumbled, 
and  that  overseers  (of  haciendas)  had  spoken  of  structures 
that  had  lost  their  identity  in  twenty  years."  Mr.  Mercer 
is  right.  When  one  considers  the  hopelessly  slipshod  manner 
of  their  building,  one  is  obliged  to  admit  that  the  wonder 
is  that  all  the  Mayan  palaces  and  temples  have  not  already 
crumbled  to  the  ground. 

There  was  only  one  method  of  building  in  Yucatan,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  say  how  this  was  carried  out.  The  walls 
average  about  two  feet  three  inches  in  thickness  and  were 
made  up  as  follows.  Ten  inches  of  stone  on  the  outside, 
about  seven  to  eight  on  the  inside,  and  the  space  intervening 
between  these  two  surfaces  is  filled  with  a  mixture  of  mortar 
and  rubble.  The  outer  surface  wall  was  generally  formed  of 
solid  square  or  oblong  stones  of  various  sizes.  No  care  was 
taken  to  "  bind  "  them  one  with  the  other  as  in  the  Egyptian 
and  modern  buildings.  We  often  noticed  the  joins  of  the 
stones  coming  directly  one  above  the  other  for  as  many  as 
three  or  four  layers,  the  result  generally  being  a  large  gaping 
crack  where  the  wall  had  bulged  at  this  weak  spot. 

Another  weak  point  in  these  outer  walls  is  the  fact  that 
the  crevices  between  the  two  layers  of  stone  are  often  filled 
up  with  stone  chips.  As  often  as  not  these  were  wedge-shaped 
and  had  been  driven  into  the  mortar  between  the  layer  and 
then  smoothed  off  level  with  the  face  of  the  building.  As 
the  mortar  dried  and  the  building  "  settled,"  these  chip  wedges 
tended  to  loosen,  and  after  a  series  of  rainy  seasons  ended  by 


THE    AGE   OF   THE    RUINS  293 

falling  out  altogether.  Some  of  the  better-placed  ones  are 
still  in  position,  though  these  may  have  been  added  only  a 
few  years  before  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards,  and,  as  the 
buildings  had  then  quite  "  settled,"  have  retained  their  posi- 
tion to  the  present  day.  But  such  a  method  is  obviously  a 
weak  spot  in  building. 

Weaker  still  is  the  method  employed  in  the  building  of 
the  inner  wall.  Most  of  the  stones  are  pyramidal  or  V-shaped, 
as  Mr.  Mercer  calls  them.  They  are  in  fact  wedge-shaped 
pieces  of  stone  as  seen  in  the  cut  on  p.  264,  embedded  in  the 
mortar  and  rubble  of  the  interior  of  the  wall,  the  thick  end 
of  the  wedge  forming  a  flat  surface  for  the  wall.  Here  again, 
as  the  wall  subsided  after  the  building  was  finished,  these  were 
pushed  out  of  place  or  loosened  by  the  weight  above  them. 
Once  this  took  place  there  was  no  hope  for  any  building. 
A  block  that  had  been  pushed  out  generally  meant  the  loosen- 
ing of  the  stones  around,  and  in  time  the  whole  facade  would 
fall.  But  often  over  the  face  of  the  stones  was  put  a  thick 
layer  of  plaster  which  is  in  many  cases  still  in  position,  speak- 
ing well  for  its  durability.  This  plaster,  as  often  as  not  two 
or  three  inches  thick,  kept  the  stone  in  position.  The  same 
slipshod  methods  are  seen  in  the  ornamentation  of  the  building. 
The  small  colonnade  at  Labna  is  an  example  in  point.  The 
columns  were  not  embedded  in  the  wall  at  the  top  or  bottom, 
but,  half  rounded,  were  stuck  on  to  this  concrete  interior 
without  the  least  solid  stone  masonry  as  support. 

The  common  type  of  roof  is  flat,  the  only  exceptions  being 
those  which  have  superstructures  rising  in  the  centre  or  front 
for  purely  ornamental  purpose.  The  cut  on  p.  264  gives  a 
section  in  which  the  roof  is  portrayed.  The  outer  wall  is 
carried  up  with  its  usual  average  thickness  to  the  top  of  the 
building.  The  interior  is  the  regular  type  of  arch,  also  shown 
in  the  illustration,  formed  by  blocks  of  stones  placed  one 
above  the  other  in  such  a  way  as  to  appear  like  about  ten 
inverted  steps.  To  add  a  better  finish  to  the  interior  after 
these  were  in  position,  they  were  trimmed  off  evenly,  making 
a  flat  sloping  surface  which  was  afterwards  plastered  and 
painted.  The  arch  did  not  come  to  a  point.  Instead,  across 
its  top  a  slab  was  laid,  as  our  illustration  shows.  Between 
the  outer  side  of  this  arch  and  the  inner  side  of  the  perpen- 
dicular outer  wall  of  the  building  the  space  was  filled  up  with 
the  same  concrete  rubble  as  was  used  between  the  walls, 
making  a  level  roof  which  in  some  cities  we  found  had  been 


494  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

cemented  over.  The  result  of  this  weight  of  loose  stone 
pressing  on  the  sides  of  the  arch  was  that  as  soon  as  the  inner 
wall  of  the  arch  became  weak  the  whole  roof  fell  in  and  filled 
up  the  building.  This  is  what  has  happened  in  the  ruins  of 
old  Chichen.  The  walls  are  found  amid  the  debris  of  fallen 
roofs.  This  is  what  is  happening  to-day  in  the  other  build- 
ings in  Chichen  and  elsewhere  in  the  Peninsula  ;  and  this  is 
what  will  happen  until  all  these  ancient  structures  have 
become  roofless  ruins.  And  that  time  is  not  far  off.  Old 
Chichen  has  fallen.  The  Chichen  standing  to-day  is  fast 
falUng  to  pieces.  Uxmal  has  no  great  lease  of  life  before  it, 
and  the  buildings  of  Labna,  Kabah,  and  Sayil  are  tottering. 

Lastly,  we  would  say  something  of  the  building  of  doorways 
in  these  cities.  The  lintels  of  the  doors  are  almost  invariably 
formed  of  the  wood  of  the  Central  American  sapota  tree 
{Achras  sapota).  The  wood  is  very  hard,  durable,  and  heavy, 
and  in  a  dry  climate  would  last  practically  for  ever.  But 
the  climate  of  Yucatan  can  scarcely  be  termed  dry  ;  for  the 
wet  season  averages  five  months.  Despite  this  fact  we  find 
those  sapota  beams  at  Chichen,  which  have  not  been  exposed 
to  the  weather,  in  fairly  good  preservation.  The  decay  of 
one  which  was  exposed  has  caused  the  falling  of  a  room  in 
the  Castillo  on  the  north  side  ;  and  this  has  also  taken  place 
in  the  room  on  the  west  side  of  the  House  of  Tigers.  Possibly 
this  was  the  cause  of  the  falling  of  the  front  of  the  temple  at 
the  north  end  of  the  Tennis  Court.  Chichen  stands  on  high 
ground  compared  with  Uxmal,  where  scarcely  a  lintel  can 
be  found  in  position  to-day,  though  Uxmal  is  not  older  than 
Chichen.  At  Labna  and  Kabah  again  are  lintels  still  in 
good  preservation,  owing  to  those  cities  being  built  on  the 
sierras.  This  question  of  the  condition  of  the  lintels,  even 
in  the  most  favourable  situations,  is  very  suggestive  in  regard 
to  the  dates  to  be  assigned  to  the  majority  of  the  ruins.  If 
the  thousand  odd  years  ascribed  to  them  by  enthusiasts 
really  represented  their  age,  there  would  not  be  a  single  lintel 
found  anywhere. 

When  to  the  slipshod  methods  of  building  one  must  add 
the  fact  that  the  climate  is  a  trying  one  for  any  style  of  archi- 
tecture and  that  the  friability  of  the  limestone  used  is  excessive, 
one  realises  that  no  very  great  date  can  be  assigned  to  the 
ruins  still  standing.  To  date  even  approximately  each  city 
is  almost  impossible.  The  ruins  of  many  of  them  point  to 
several  dates  for  each.     Some  buildings  are  intact ;    others 


THE   AGE    OF   THE    RUINS  295 

are  falling  ;  while  some  are  mere  crumbling  heaps.  No  doubt 
none  of  the  larger  cities  were  built  all  at  once.  They  repre- 
sented years  of  labour.  For  example  the  Palace  at  Sayil 
might  have  taken  a  score  of  years.  In  most  cities  the  first 
building  attempted  was  probably  a  temple.  Possibly  a 
century  might  have  elapsed  before  a  second  temple  or  a  palace 
was  put  up,  and  thus  to-day  you  naturally  have  mere  heaps 
of  stone  close  to  buildings  still  intact. 

In  most  places  we  were  able  to  determine  the  relative 
ages  of  the  buildings.  On  many  sites  there  were  traces  of 
the  earliest  erections  marked  by  fallen  mounds.  There  was 
often  a  middle  period  between  these  and  that  represented  by 
the  buildings  still  standing.  At  Chichen  there  were,  as  we 
have  said,  two  distinct  periods,  but  these  were  obviously  far 
apart  in  date.  Those  of  the  first  period  were  probably  in 
building  within  a  century  of  the  arrival  of  the  foreign  archi- 
tects ;  and  fell  probably  at  or  about  the  time  the  second 
set  of  buildings  were  put  up.  Structures  built  in  the  manner 
of  those  standing  at  Chichen  to-day  could  not  by  any  possibility 
remain  intact  in  a  climate  Uke  Yucatan's,  if  indeed  anywhere, 
for  a  period  longer  than  about  six  hundred  years.  Thus,  if 
they  were  built  about  the  eighth  or  ninth  century  they  would 
be  far  advanced  in  ruin  at  the  Conquest. 

After  a  most  careful  survey,  we  think  that  the  ruins  of 
Chichen  standing  to-day  were  built  at  or  about  the  fall  of 
Mayapan  (1426  or  1462).  There  was  no  doubt  a  great  re- 
crudescence of  building  throughout  Yucatan  after  this  event. 
History  affords  many  examples  of  the  fact  that  a  great  victory 
is  celebrated  by  the  conquerors,  on  their  return  to  their  centres, 
setting  up  temples  and  palaces  commemorative  of  their  success. 
The  dissensions  and  intrigues  leading  up  to  the  overthrow 
of  the  powerful  cacique  of  Mayapan  had  probably  for  some 
years  before  that  event  checked  building  enterprise  throughout 
the  Peninsula.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  war  an  impulse  to 
city-beautifying  was  experienced.  Probably  the  next  greatest 
chief  of  Yucatan,  after  the  vanquished  lord  of  Mayapan, 
was  the  cacique  of  the  Itzas  of  Chichen,  and  on  the  success 
of  the  confederation,  of  which  it  may  be  presumed  he  was 
an  important  member,  he  built  himself  a  new  city  on  the  site 
of  his  already  decaying  one.  At  about  the  same  time  the 
group  of  cities  of  the  south,  Uxmal,  Kabah,  Labna  and  Sayil, 
were  restored  or  rebuilt.  The  building  zeal  during  the  century 
previous  to  the  Conquest  seems  to  have  reached  a  high  pitch. 


296  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

The  outljnng  ruins  in  Yucatan  such  as  El  Meco,  Tuloom,  those 
on  Isla  de  Mujeres,  and  those  which  we  discovered  on  the  islands 
of  Cozumel  and  Cancun,  represented  an  outer  ring  of  Mayan 
civiUsation.  Their  builders  had  evidently  never  learnt  the 
art  of  the  finest  carving.  The  ruins  are  peculiarly  devoid 
of  ornamentation,  and  the  whole  style  is  uncouth  and  suggests 
crudity.  In  a  like  manner  a  rough  knowledge  of  building 
spread  far  into  the  south.  Thus  to-day,  between  big  ruined 
centres  such  as  Copan,  Piedras  Negras,  and  Palenque,  we 
find  smaller  towns  some  of  the  buildings  of  which  are  still 
intact. 

What  happened  in  Mexico  ?  The  knowledge  of  building 
had  spread  over  the  whole  of  the  plateau  within  the  few 
centuries  succeeding  the  founding  of  Copan.  There  would 
only  be  the  one  period,  the  one  wave  of  building  which  would 
wash  into  Mexico  before  news  of  the  wonderful  art  reached 
the  ears  of  the  ever-warlike  Aztecs,  to  whom  such  accounts 
would  suggest  much  wealth  and  a  country  worth  pillaging. 
They  may  have  found  the  wealth  of  Mexico  in  its  then  un- 
developed state  disappointing,  but  they  evidently  quickly 
grasped  the  advantage  stone  houses  had  over  skin  wigwams 
always  needing  repair  and  always  draughty.  Conquering  the 
Mayans  and  christening  them  Toltecs,  they  set  them  to  work 
to  build  cities.  Aztec  deities  were,  for  the  most  part, 
substituted  for  the  Mayan  gods.  Such  blood-loving  gods  as 
Huitzilopochtli,  in  whose  honour  the  historians  assert  tens 
of  thousands  of  human  beings  were  sacrificed,  were  purely  of 
Aztec  origin.  The  serpent-worship  so  dear  to  the  Aztecs' 
forefathers,  the  Shoshonees,  was  much  more  in  evidence 
than  it  had  ever  been  among  the  Mayans.  Very  speedily  the 
influence  of  the  warlike  Aztecs  spread  over  the  country  south- 
ward until,  as  some  historians  say,  they  reached  Mayapan 
in  Yucatan.  Certainly  they  must  have  reached  Honduras, 
where  Dr.  Gann,  British  Commissioner  at  Corosal,  told  us  he 
had  found  distinct  traces  of  Aztec  culture.  But  this  was  at 
a  period  not  many  years  before  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards. 
It  may  even  have  been  so  late  that  Cortes,  who  was  destined 
to  be  the  conqueror  of  these  conquering  upstarts,  the  Aztecs, 
had  already  heard  of  wonderful  Yucatan,  which  had  been 
termed  "  Isla  Rica,"  and  which,  a  few  years  later,  formed 
the  stepping-stone  to  his  complete,  if  inglorious,  conquest  of 
Mexico. 

Summarising,   then,   the   arguments  of  this  chapter,   we 


THE   AGE   OF   THE    RUINS  297 

would  venture  to  say  that  the  building  civilisation  of  Central 
America  flourished  between  the  eighth  century  and  the  coming 
of  the  Spaniards  in  1517.  The  sequence  of  cities,  as  near  as 
can  be  judged,  would  be  as  follows  : 

1.  Copan  and  Quirigua,  the  first,  or  among  the  first,  erected 
during  the  eighth  century. 

2.  Piedras  Negras  and  Yaxchilan,  with  possibly  some 
undiscovered,  follow  closely  in  date. 

3.  The  ruins  of  Palenque,  probably  contemporaneous 
with  the  last-mentioned  groups,  was  a  city  from  the  earhest 
building  period,  but  its  palace  was  restored  or  rebuilt  at  a 
much  later  date. 

4.  The  mounds  of  fallen  debris  found  throughout  Yucatan 
represent  the  first  buildings  in  that  country,  and  date  from 
about  the  ninth  to  the  eleventh  century. 

5.  Those  buildings  that  have  more  recently  fallen  repre- 
sent the  middle  age  of  the  building  civihsation,  dating  from 
the  twelfth  to  the  fourteenth  centuries. 

6.  Those  buildings  standing  to-day  belong  to  the  latter- 
day  period,  and  date  from  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth 
century  until  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards  in  1517. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS 

THROUGHOUT  that  part  of  Central  America  which  from 
time  immemorial  has  been  inhabited  by  the  Mayans, 
in  their  mined  cities,  on  the  stelae,  on  the  door-posts,  on  the 
wooden  and  stone  lintels,  on  altar- slabs,  and  on  special  tablets 
are  hieroglyphics.  Wherever  the  Mayan  Linguistic  Stock  is 
found,  in  Yucatan,  in  Guatemala,  in  Chiapas,  in  Tabasco, 
and  in  Honduras  we  find  them,  the  only  exception  being 
among  the  Huastecas,  the  Mayan  tribe  living  on  the  Panuco 
River,  Mexico.  Considering  the  extent  of  the  Mayan  ruins, 
these  hieroglyphics  are  few  in  number  ;  but  the  Spanish 
vandals  are  known  to  have  burnt  countless  manuscripts 
written  on  bark  ^  and  leaf.  And  thus,  if  the  carved  inscriptions 
are  sparse,  there  is  good  ground  for  believing  that  the  art  of 
writing  was  practised  for  some  centuries  before  the  Con- 
quest. Four  manuscripts  only  survive,  and  these  we  describe 
later.  The  hieroglyphics,  whether  carved  or  written,  and 
no  matter  what  their  position  or  what  the  material  upon 
which  they  are  inscribed,  are  invariably  of  the  same  nature, 
though  it  is  noticeable  that  those  on  some  monuments  are 
finer  cut,  more  intricate,  and  display  a  higher  art  than  others. 
In  Mexico  writing  never  reached  such  a  high  degree  of  per- 
fection as  in  Yucatan  and  the  other  southern  territories  of 
the  Mayan  tribes.  Thus  it  would  seem  that  at  the  time  of 
the  Aztec  invasion  the  Mayans  of  the  Mexican  plateau  were 
only  acquainted  with  the  merest  outhne  of  the  art  which  their 
kinsmen  of  the  south  had  so  far  perfected.  This  is  entirely 
consonant  with  the  theories  we  have  earlier  advanced  as  to 
the  comparatively  crude  stage  of  civilisation  to  which  the 

1  Bishop  Landa,  first  bishop  of  Yucatan,  according  to  the  evidence 
of  a  Jesuit  chronicler,  had  everything  appertaining  to  the  Mayan 
religion,  upon  which  he  could  lay  his  hands,  destroyed.  Five  thousand 
idols,  13  large  and  22  smaller  stone  altars,  27  manuscripts  on  deer- 
skins, and  197  other  manuscripts  are  catalogued  as  thus  perishing. 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS  299 

Mexican  Mayans,  the  Toltecs  of  the  Aztec  traditions,  had 
attained  at  the  coming  of  the  warlike  northern  tribes.  In 
most  cases  the  Mexican  writings  are  pictographic  rather  than 
hieroglyphic,  though  Mayan  glyphs  do  occur.  The  best 
collection  of  these  pictographs  is  that  made  by  Alexander 
von  Humboldt  and  presented  by  him  to  the  Royal  Library 
of  Berlin  in  January,  1806.  Some  of  these  are  described  in 
his  Vues  des  CordilUres  et  Monuments  des  Peuples  indigenes 
de  I'Amirique  ;  while  others  are  reproduced  in  Lord  Kings- 
borough's  Antiquities  of  Mexico. 

Up  to  the  present  all  efforts  to  find  an  undeniable  "  key  " 
to  the  decipherment  of  the  Mayan  hieroglyphics  have  failed. 
The  most  resolute  and  intelligent  work  has  been  done  by 
Americans  and  Germans,  Among  the  former  the  most  famous 
are  Professor  C5mis  W.  Thomas,  T.  Goodman,  S.  Holden, 
and  in  past  years  the  late  Dr.  D.  G.  Brinton.  Among  the 
latter  those  most  prominent  are  Professors  E.  Forstemann, 
Eduard  Seler,  and  Paul  Schellhas.  France  has  been  repre- 
sented by  Abbe  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg,  Professor  Leon  de 
Rosny,  Count  de  Charencey,  and  M.  A.  Pousse  ;  while  England, 
alas  1  has  been  practically  unrepresented  in  this  important 
work,  for  Mr.  A.  P.  Maudslay,  the  only  British  student  in  this 
field,  has  chiefly  devoted  himself  to  photographing  rather 
than  attempting  to  decipher  the  glyphs. 

Much  might  reasonably  have  been  expected  from  the 
labours  of  all  these  scholars,  but  practically  nothing  has 
resulted  but  a  series  of  theories,  over  the  exact  value  and 
apphcation  of  which  there  is  endless  bickering.  Attempts 
have  been  made  from  time  to  time  to  compose  an  alphabet 
by  which  the  glyphs  could  be  read  phonetically.  The  first 
great  stir  in  this  direction  was  made  by  Abb6  de  Bourbourg 
in  1864,  when  he  announced  that  he  had  discovered  a  year 
before  in  Madrid  a  manuscript  entitled,  Relacion  de  las 
Cosas  de  Yucatan,  by  Diego  de  Landa,  Bishop  of  Merida  from 
1573  to  1579.  I^  this  manuscript  was  included  an  alphabet 
of  the  Mayan  glyphs  with  their  equivalents  in  Spanish.  For 
the  moment  this  "  find  "  was  regarded  as  a  Central  American 
"  Rosetta  Stone,"  and  every  one  believed  the  glyphs  would 
offer  no  further  difiiculties.  But  the  archaeological  world 
was  doomed  to  disappointment,  for  on  an  attempt  being  made 
to  use  the  alphabet,  it  broke  down  and  was  declared  by  all 
to  be  an  invention  of  Landa.  But  the  Abbe  did  not  give  it 
up ;   and,  assisted  by  Leon  de  Rosny,  he  defined  twenty-nine 


300  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

letters  with  numerous  variants,  and  published  his  report  in 
1869  in  the  introduction  to  the  Codex  Troano  ;  while  the 
result  of  de  Rosny's^  labours  were  printed  in  his  Essai  sur  le 
DSchiffrement  de  VEcriture  hieratique  de  I'Amerique  Centrale 
in  1876. 

The  next  "  alphabet  "  was  that  propounded  in  The  Scientific 
American  for  January,  1885,  by  Dr.  Le  Plongeon,  who,  in  an 
article  entitled  "  Ancient  Maya  Hieratic  Alphabet  according 
to  Mural  Inscription,"  declared  it  to  contain  twenty-three 
letters  with  the  usual  numerous  variants.  But  this,  like 
Landa's,  was  strangled  almost  at  its  birth  by  remorseless 
scholars.  Next  came  forward  Dr.  Hilbome  T.  Cresson,  who 
at  meetings  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement 
of  Science  in  1892  and  1894,  advanced  the  theory  that  the 
characters  were  purely  phonetic  ;  but  his  untimely  death 
cut  short  his  researches.  Professor  Cyrus  W.  Thomas,  in  a 
paper  in  The  American  Anthropologist  for  July,  1893,  entitled 
"  Are  the  Maya  Hieroglyphics  Phonetic  ?  "  rather  follows 
Cresson,  but  in  recent  years  has  reconsidered  this  view  and 
now  would  seem  to  hold  that  some,  at  least,  are  ideographs. 

Thus  there  may  be  said  to  be  the  two  schools  of  decipherers  : 
those  who  believe  the  Mayan  writing  to  be  phonetic  and 
those  who  hold  it  to  be  ideographic.  For  the  latter  stand 
the  German  school  (Forstemann,  Seler  and  Schellhas)  ;  for 
the  former  the  Abbe,  de  Rosny  and  de  Charencey.  The 
American  students  have  been  for  the  most  part  willing  to 
follow  the  lead  of  Cyrus  Thomas  and  declare  it  to  be  a  mixture 
of  phonetics  and  ideographs.  After  years  of  careful  study 
of  the  glyphs  Professor  Forstemann  has  come  to  the  general 
conclusion  that  they  are  largely  composed  of  numerals  made 
up  of  astronomical  ideographs.  He  was  the  first  to  discover 
what  are  now  generally  accepted  as  the  various  numeral  signs. 
His  first  achievement  was  his  alleged  identification  of  one  of 
the  glyphs  with  our  nought  in  April,  1885.  From  this  start 
he  went  slowly  up  the  numeral  scale  until  he  asserted  he  had 
deciphered  the  signs  for  the  numbers  up  to  twenty.  These 
are  now  generally  accepted  as  correct  and  are  composed  as 
shown  on  opposite  page.  Thus  it  would  seem,  if  Professor 
Forstemann  is  right,  that  the  highest  number  to  which  they 
counted  by  means  of  these  dots  and  dashes  was  19.  No 
greater  number  than  this  has  ever  been  found  in  any  of  the 
codices  or  on  the  monuments.  Assuming  this  as  true,  it  is 
obvious  that  the  number  20  must  be   looked  for  in  a  new 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS  301 

TTn  ^        o  •   •  =  12 


•  =1 

•    •  -        2 


•    •     •     • 


13 

14 


•    •    • 


•    •     • 


3 

4  ===^ 

5 

6  '  •   16 


15 


17 


7  ^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

8 

9  =^=^=         -    18 


__^___^_        =  10 

•   •  •  »  __ 
=  II                             -         =    19 

form.  Professor  Forstemann's  idea  is  that  the  20  glyph 
changed   according   to   its   meaning   and  surroundings.      In 

some  cases  it  was  represented    /^yO) ;  while  in  others    > 

or  its   variant       •     .     He   holds   that   20  was  the  highest 

number  in  use  among  the  Mayans.  This  he  tries  to  show 
was  natural  enough,  for,  writing  in  The  Bureau  of  American 
Ethnology  Bulletin  28,  p.  499,  he  says  :  "  Nature  suggested 
this  .  .  .  because  these  they  could  count  on  their  fingers 
and  toes,  in  four  divisions  of  five  each."  From  the  early 
historians  we  learn  that  the  Mayan  month  consisted  of 
twenty  days  {kin),  which  was  known  as  one  chuen  (month). 
Any  number  over  twenty  was  thus  known  as  one  chuen  so 
many  kin,  or  one  month  so  many  days.  The  Mayan  year 
was  composed  of  eighteen  months,  forming  a  period  of  360 
days  known  as  an  ahau.  The  month-names  were  (i)  Pop, 
(2)  Uo,  (3)  Zip,  (4)  Zes,  (5)  Zeec,  (6)  Xul,  (7)  Zo-yaxkin,  (8) 
Mol,  (9)  Chen,  (10)  Yaax,  (11)  Zac,  (12)  Ceh,  (13)  Mac,  (14) 
Kankin,  (15)  Moan,  (16)  Pax,  (17)  Kayab,  (18)  Cunku.  The 
numbering  of  the  years,  too,  was  never  carried  beyond  twenty, 


302  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

when  it  became  known  as  a  katun}     Thus  the  following  table 
of  time  has  been  worked  out : 

20  kin  (days)  =     i  chuen  (month). 

i8  chuen       . .  =     i  ahau  (year)  360  days. 

20  ahaus       . .  =     1  katun  (20  years  or  7,200  days). 

20  katuns     . .  =1  cycle  (400  years  or  144,000  days). 

13  cycles       . .  =     1  great  cycle  (5,200  years  or  1,872,000 

days). 

73  great  cycles  =     i  era. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  Mayan  year  fell  short  of  the 
Solar  Year  by  five  days  five  hours  48  minutes  497  seconds. 
This  was  made  up  by  adding  five  days  to  the  completion  of 
each  year,  and  these  are  known  as  "  interlacery  "  days,  thus 
making  a  year  of  365  days,  which  the  Mayans  called  haar. 
But  although  the  Mayans  knew  how  to  count  up  to  twenty, 
they  did  not  always  use  this  as  a  time-count.  The  year  was 
divided  up  into  weeks  of  13  days,  which  were  arranged  irre- 
spective of  the  twenty  day-names,  which  were  as  follows  : 
(i)  Kan,  (2)  Chicchan,  (3)  Cimi,  (4)  Manik,  (5)  Lamat,  (6) 
Muluc,  (7)  Oc,  (8)  Chuen,  (9)  Eh,  (10)  Ben,  (11)  Ix,  (12)  Min, 
(13)  Cih,  (14)  Caban,  (15)  Ezenab,  (16)  Cauac,  (17)  Ahau,  (18) 
Imix,  (19)  Ik,  (20)  Akbal.  Thus  it  would  seem  that  if  the 
week  began  with  Kan,  it  would  finish  with  the  13th  day  Cib, 
and  a  new  week  would  start  with  the  14th  month-day  Caban 
as  the  first  day.  This  cutting  up  of  the  year,  irrespective  of 
the  months,  into  "  weeks  "  of  thirteen  days  involved  further 
difficulties  at  the  end  of  the  year.  At  the  end  of  an  ahau 
(360  days)  there  would  have  been  twenty-seven  of  these 
13-day  weeks  with  an  odd  nine  days.  Again,  after  the  "  in- 
terlacery "  days  had  been  added  and  the  solar  year  was  com- 
plete, there  would  be  twenty-eight  13-day  weeks  and  one 
odd  day. 

To  further  complicate  matters  these  Mayan  time-counts 
disclose  yet  another  week  of  five  days  ;  but  this  works  in  with 
the  20-day  months,  the  ahau  (360  days),  and  the  solar  year 
accurately,  so  that  it  is  easier  to  understand.  From  these 
generally  accepted  statements  we  draw  up  the  following 
table,  showing  the  days  and  months  as  they  would  appear 
to  make  up  the  solar  year. 

^  The  word  is  said  to  be  derived  from  kat,  to  ask,  and  tun,  stone  : 
i.e.  the  stone  which  when  asked  gives  account,  in  allusion  to  the  fact 
that  at  each  katun  a  stone  was  set  up  to  memorialize  the  date. 


Names 
OF  Days. 

Kan 

Chicchan   . . 

Cimi 

Manik 

Lamat 

Muluc 

Oc  . . 

Chuen 

Eb  . . 

Ben 

Ix   .. 

Men 

Cib.. 

Caban 

Ezenab 

Cauac 

Ahau 

Ymix 

Ik   .. 

Akbal 

0  K 

2  n 

H  t4 

as  » 

•"0 

Names 

of 
Months. 

v)  0\0i  AMMMCUtOMOvO   OOV)  a\(ji  ^  L»  M  M 

M 

Pop. 

MHWM                                                                                 MMMM 

M 

Uo. 

W     M     M     W 

CO 

Zip. 

HMMM                                                                                  MMMW 

N   M  to   N   «   0  vO   OOVj  0\«ji  AO»NmwNmO>0 

.(^ 

Zes. 

VO   Q0>1   ONOl  .^OiiMMUiMHiOO   00^)   OsOl  .(>.  (M 

Ul 

MjCCOu 

mmmm                                                   mmmm 
WMmOJMmOvO  00^  OnOi  4^C»Mm(jJMmO 

o\ 

Xul. 

M                                                                                 MMMM 

0  0  oovj  Oi{ji  4^OJ»0M0a»M0O   oovj  otn  ■*«. 

vj 

Yaxkin. 

MMMM                                                                                 M     M     M 

.^WMmC»MmO«   OOV)  OOi  .^  W  N  m  U  M   m 

00 

Mol. 

M  0  vO  OOM  0\Ui  .^UMmUMmOvO  oovj  oMji 

VO 

Chen. 

MMMM                                                                          MM 

Ul.^Mt»MU>MMOvO   OOV)  0\0l  -tk.  U   M   M  CU   to 

M 

0 

Yax. 

Intercalated 
Days  to 
complete 
the  year 

of  365  days. 

M     M     M                                                                                  MMMM 

M    M    0  0    OON)    0\0l  .^COtOMOJhiMOO    OOV)    0\ 

M 
M 

Zac. 

MMMM                                                                                 M 

OtOl  .^(MtOMUiMMO^O   00V4  0\Ui  .^  00   to   M  Co 

M 

to 

Ceh. 

MMMM                                                                                 MMMM 

CO   to   M   0  >0   OOV*  ONCn  .^CONmwIOmOvO   OOV) 

M 
Co 

Mac. 

MMMM 

N)   0\0l  ^COtOMCOtOMOvO   OONJ   0\0l  .^  CO   to   M 

M 

Kankin. 

Kan     . . 
Chicchan 
Cimi     . . 
Manik  . . 
Lamat . . 

MMMM                                                                                 MMMM 

M  OJ   ti    M   0  0    OOVO   0\Cn  -(^UitOMCOtOMOOOO 

M 

Cn 

Moan. 

MMMM 

OON)  ONCn  Acot0MCot0MO<O  oovj  ONCn  ^  u>  to 

M 

Pax. 

to   M  CO   to   M   0  ^0   OON)   0\0i  -t^COtOMCOtOMOvO 

M 
VJ 

Kayab. 

>H     M     M     H 
HW    N    H    0 

MMMM 

vO  OOVJ  0\Cn  4!>.CotOMOJiOMOvO   OOVj  OCn  +k  w 

M 

00 

Cunku. 

(^^CO     to     M 

tOMMMMMMMMMM 

0  0  OOVJ  ou,  jk  Co  to  M  0  vo  OOVJ  a\cn  4k.  CO  to  M 

Number  of 
Days. 

304  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

We  have  followed  the  generally  accepted  view  and  begun 
the  year  with  the  day  Kan,  though  some  students  follow 
Mr.  J.  T.  Goodman  in  his  belief  that  Ik  represents  the  first 
day.  Whoever  is  right,  it  is  certain  that  the  year  can  begin 
with  its  first  day-name  only  once  every  four  years.  If  a  year 
begins  with  Kan,  it  must,  as  shown  in  our  table,  inevitably 
finish  with  the  day  Lamat.  Thus  the  following  day,  the  first 
in  the  New  Year,  would  be  Muluc.  In  the  same  way  the 
second  year  will  finish  with  Ben  and  the  third  year  will  com- 
mence with  Ix.  This  will  finish  with  Ezenah  and  the  new 
one  would  commence  with  Cauac  and  finish  with  Akhal,  when 
Kan  would  again  begin  the  year.  In  Goodman's  theory 
these  days  would  change.  The  beginning  days  would  be 
Ik,  Manik,  Eh,  and  Caban  ;  while  the  last  days  of  the  year 
would  be  respectively  Ctmi,  Chuen,  Cib,  and  Imix. 

One  of  the  things  that  the  Mexicans  seem  to  have  adopted 
from  the  Mayans  was  the  twenty-day  period.  The  double 
meaning  of  the  days  of  the  two  countries  often  is  seen  in  the 
Zapotec  country,  where  it  would  seem  the  knowledge  of  the 
Maya  Calendar  had  not  entirely  died  out  through  the  invasion 
of  the  Aztec,  "  unless,"  says  Dr.  Seler,  "  we  ought  to  accept 
the  theory  that  the  Zapotecs  or  their  kindred  were  those 
among  whom  the  calendar  was  invented,  and  by  whom  the 
knowledge  of  it  was  originally  communicated  to  both  the 
Mexicans  and  the  Mayas  "  {Bureau  of  American  Ethnology 
Report,  Bulletin  28,  p.  274). 

Day  Signs 

©^jj  -v         ^ ^  Kan.     D.    G.    Brinton 
A-w-/         r^o  says  this  was  the  word 
<-UU          UlUin     Maya     to    denote 
polished     stone,     shell 
pendant,  or  bead.     It  was  their  medium  for  bartering.     Seler 
says  it  represents  an  eye,  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg  a  tooth,  and 
Schellhas  a  grain  of  Indian  com. 


2nd. 


Chicchan.  Brinton  thinks  this  day  was  called  after  the  Maya 
chich  kuck,  "  twisted  thread,"  whilst  Brasseur  thought  it  to 
represent  a  woven  petticoat  and  Seler  a  "  serpent's  skin." 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND    PAINTINGS 


305 


3rd. 


(^ 


Cimi.  Supposed  to 
have  its  root  in 
cimil,  "  closed  in 
death." 


4th. 


Manik.    "  A  hand  in  the  act  of  grasping," 
now  spoken  of  in  Maya  as  mach. 


5th. 


V*' 


Lamat.    Generally  supposed  to  have  had  its  origin  in  lamal 
kin,  "  sim-setting." 


6th.  f7^    rn    c°^  ^'^"'-  ^^^^ 

V,^^^^  V^     V  >w^    same       root       as 

month   Mol,   pro- 
bably molay  ik,  "  the  winds  united." 


^-  ©      © 


® 


Oc.    Brinton  says  it  means  "  footprints,"  but  Brasseur  says 
the  Maya  word  oc  means  "  dog." 

-,,      A  ^^^^  jH^  jc^    Chuen.         Brinton 

^*^-    Lj[    J  Q^  Q^    says  it  was  derived 

^^"""^  from     chi,     "  with 

fangs,"  or  chu,  a  calabash.     Brasseur  and  Seler  say  it  is  a 

monkey,  Schellhas  "  a  snake."     We  would  say  this  came  from 

chi,  "  mouth,"  and  is  to  represent  a  snake's  mouth. 


> 


9th. 
present  "  an  old  man. 


Eb.       In      Maya 

©means  "  ladder," 
but  the  glyph  is 
supposed    to    re- 


20 


3o6 


THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 


loth. 


straw  roof,  and  Brasseur  "  a  path,"  be. 


Ben.  Brinton  suggests  the 
Unes  across  the  glyph  to  re- 
present a  "  wooden  bridge," 
Maya  be  che,  Seler  a  mat  or 


nth. 


© 


Ix.    Seler  has  seen  in  this  the  "  spotted  skin  of  a  jaguar," 
while  Brinton  derives  it  from  xiix,  "  scattered  grain-husks." 


I2th. 


14th. 


15th. 


Men. 


^3th.  W  &  Q  ^  ^  '"■ 


Cuban.    Said  by 

Brinton  to  mean 

^  '     the  ' '  cork-screw 

curl"  of  women. 

Ezenab.  Probably  repre- 
sents the  flint  sacrificial 
knife  known  by  the  same 
name. 


i6th.    ^~^ 


Canac.    Seler  thinks  this  the  sign  of  the  Moan  bird. 


17th. 


<^     (^     ^ 


Ahau.    Supposed  to  be  the  "  conventional  drawing  of  "^the 
fuU  face." 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND    PAINTINGS  307 


i8th. 


Ivnix. 


loth.     (h^  /v^  /TTN    ^^-      Meaning   air, 

^         \ZJ  yfj  tVJ    breath,  soul,  or  Ufe. 


20th. 


akah,  meaning  in  Maya,  "  night." 


. --^ .    Akhal.       It  is 

•"(-v-^Lv-^:  this  has  a  near 
resemblance  to 


Month  Signs 


ist. 


Pep.       Brinton      says 
means  "  mat." 


2nd.     I—  [o] 

[5  I  feze' 


No.    Suggested 
as    meaning    a 

^<^j    "prickly  pear" 

^  or  frog. 


3rd. 


[&)    Zip- 


4th. 


Zodz.  Brinton 
says  means  "  bat," 
and  Seler  has  later 
connected  it  with 
Maya  "Bat  God." 


3o8 


THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 


5th. 


Tec  or  Tzec, 


^uu^ 


6th. 


7th. 


© 


Xul. 


Y  ax  kin.      In 
/    Maya  means 
"  new  moon  or 
high  sun." 


8th. 


gth. 


;    Mol.    Probably  derived  the 
:    same  as  day  name  Muluc. 


^.   Chen.    Means    "  spnng 
^^  orweU." 


loth.    (^ 


Yax.    Known  as  the  "  fea- 
^  ther  sign." 


nth. 


W]     Zac.    Meaning  "white. 


I2th. 


Ii  ^    Ceh.    Meaning    in 
Maya,  "deer." 


HIEROGLYPHICS  AND    PAINTINGS  309 

Mac.  The  first  char- 
acter is  supposed  to 
represent  the  lid  of  a 
lar   known    as    mac 

,111 1  1 1  mj  J 

K,^^^     among    the    Mayas. 
The  second  character 
is   much  like  the  day  sign  Kan,   with  a   "  comb  "-shaped 
design  imdemeath. 


13th. 


14th. 


Kan  kin.  This 
month  name  is 
supposedto  mean 
"the  yellow  sun." 
The  first  is 
thought  to  show 

the  sun  sign  Kin,  while  the  second  sign  has  been  suggested 

as  a  breast-bone,  a  shield,  or  a  dog. 


15th. 


Moan.  This  is 
thought  to  have 
been  named  after 
the  crested  falcon 
known  to  the  Mayas 
as  the  Moan  bird. 


Pax.   Pro- 

(lyS)   1/    bablyfrom 

the    Maya 


i6th.    „  _  .  __, 

word  pax- 
che,  mean- 
ing "drum,"  which  seems  to  form  the  first  elements  of  this  glyph. 


17th. 


Kay  ah.  According 
to  Landa's  alphabet 
these  were  the  signs 
for  a  or  ak,  but  Schell- 
has  thinks  they  are 
meant  for  the  turtle. 


310  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

Cum    ku.      Forste- 

mann's  explanation 

i8th.        ^u)^A^  '\-^r\     of  this  glyph  is  that 

it  represents  "  two 
flashes  of  lightning 
or    the    sun's    rays 

striking   on   a   maize   field,"   but    we    see   nothing   for   this 

suggestion. 

Knowing  then  that  the  Mayan  year  consisted  of  eighteen 
2o-day  months,  the  glyphs  to  represent  these  days  and 
months  have  been  looked  for,  and  it  is  believed  they  have 
been  found.  On  the  opposite  page  these  glyphs  are  illustrated, 
namely,  the  day  and  month  signs.  Further,  the  signs  re- 
presenting the  other  time-counts  have  been  looked  for  and 
declared  recognised.  The  first,  the  year  or  ahau  sign,  is 
supposed  to  be  represented  in  a  variety  of  forms,  three  of 
which  are  given  on  the  opposite  page.  It  is  thought  to  be 
the  same  with  the  katun  or  20-year  sign,  and  the  cycle  (20 
katuns)  and  great  cycle  (13  cycles)  signs,  three  of  each  of 
which  we  give  on  the  opposite  page.  The  first  three  of  this 
group,  namely,  the  great-cycle  signs,  if  they  have  been 
correctly  read,  would  seem  to  denote  an  extraordinary  date. 
According  to  Goodman's  chronological  table,  he  would  have 
us  believe  that  at  Copan,  where  these  glyphs  always  head  a 
series  of  characters  on  a  tablet,  they  belong  to  the  53rd,  54th, 
and  55th  great  cycles.  From  these  dates  various  subtractions 
are  made  into  which  we  have  no  space  to  go  in  detail.  In 
any  case,  according  to  the  present  mode  of  reckoning,  the 
glyphs  at  Copan  and  Quirigua  bear  the  highest  numbers  in 
the  chronological  calendar,  and  thus  those  cities  must  be  as- 
sumed to  be  the  latest  built,  a  proposition  which,  as  we  pointed 
out  in  Chapter  XVII.,  is  untenable. 

But  whether  or  not  this  calendar  system  is  really  accurate 
(there  are  a  great  many  serious  discrepancies)  has  yet  to  be 
proved.  In  the  museums  of  America  and  Germany  scholars 
have  striven  hard  to  soundly  base  their  theories  ;  while  others 
have  done  yeoman  service  in  the  field,  and  undergone  great 
hardships  in  collecting  material  upon  which  these  learned 
men  might  work.  In  their  enthusiasm  the  latter  have,  without 
doubt,  blundered  into  deductions  which  are  unjustifiable. 
They  have  detected  similarities  in  glyphs  which  no  other 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS 
Great  Cycle  Signs 


311 


Katun  Signs 


8 

Ahau  Signs 


10 


person  can  detect.  As  an  example  of  this  we  give  an  illustra- 
tion from  Professor  E.  Forstemann's  own  work.  In  the 
Bureau  of  American  Ethnology  Report  {Bulletin  28,  p.  549), 


312 


THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 


after  speaking  of  the  ahau  and  katun  glyphs,  he  says : 
"  Then  follows,  almost  of  necessity,  63  =  144,000  days 
(^ven  in  our  figure  i],  as  the  sign  of  similar  form  on  the  super- 
scription has  led  us  to  conjecture,  and  as  we  see  it  repeated 
in  C5,  F6,  U2,  and  V12." 

We  agree  with  him  that,  as  B  3  comes  directly  under  the 
initial  glyph  and  above  the  signs  representing  the  ahau  and 
katun,  it  is  the  144,000  days  or  cycle  sign — that  is,  of 
course,  always  allowing  that  his  premisses,  to  which  we 
give  no  adherence,  are  correct ;  and  we  follow  him  when  he 
sees  it  "  repeated  "  in  C5,  F6,  and  U2.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  these  three  glyphs  are  variations  of  B  3  ;    but  V 12  is 


V12 

an  entirely  new  character  bearing  not  the  slightest  resem- 
blance except  in  Professor  Forstemann's  own  imagination. 
This  is  but  one  example  of  his  detecting  likeness  where  none 
exists.  The  last-mentioned  sign  has  its  counterpart  or  its 
variants  in  many  portions  of  the  inscription  of  the  Tablet  of 
the  Cross  at  Palenque  with  which  Professor  Forstemann  is 
dealing,  and  if  he  had  looked  he  would,  with  his  superior 
knowledge  of  the  Maya  glyphs,  have  found  them  quite  easily. 

But  what  of  the  other  glyphs  ?  Are  they  simply  all 
calendar  signs  interlaced  with  a  few  other  glyphs  appertaining 
to  deities  ;  or  are  they  records  of  Mayan  history  ?  D.  G. 
Brinton,  in  his  book  A  Primer  of  Mayan  Hieroglyphics  (Chicago, 
1898),  says  :  "  We  need  not  search  for  the  facts  of  history, 
the  names  of  the  mighty  kings  or  the  dates  of  conquests. 
We  shall  not  find  them.  Chronometry  we  shall  find,  but  not 
chronicles  ;  astronomy  with  astrological  aims  ;  ritual,  but 
no  records.  Pre-Columbian  history  will  not  be  constructed 
from  them.  This  will  be  a  disappointment  to  many,  but 
it  is  the  conclusion  towards  which  tend  all  the  soundest 
investigations  of  recent  years." 

Is  Dr.  Brinton  right  ?  Are  we  to  find  no  records  of  this 
mysterious  civilisation  ?     Are  we  to  be  for  ever  denied  written 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS  313 

proof  whence  the  Mayans  came  and  how  they  attained  their 
civiHsation  ?  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  presumption  is  in- 
correct, and  that  these  undeciphered  glyphs  and  those  which 
cannot  as  yet  be  regarded  as  satisfactorily  accounted  for  as 
mere  chronological  data  will  prove  to  be  the  key  to  this  pro- 
blem of  the  New  World.  Of  the  glyphs  that  are  alleged  to 
be  calendar  signs  we  have  already  spoken  ;  their  importance 
can  only  be  shown  when  their  neighbours  have  been  de- 
ciphered, and  until  that  day  comes  the  wise  will  withhold 
their  acceptance  of  the  present  calendar  or  astronomical 
reading.  Searches  have  been  made,  searches  are  being  made, 
but  the  students  who  have  worked  and  who  are  working 
have  received  little  support  in  their  enterprise. 

It  has  been  suggested  and  in  some  cases  proved  that 
many  of  the  glyphs  apart  from  the  calendar  signs  are  astro- 
nomical and  animal  ideographs  of  deities.  Amongst  those 
which  are  repeatedly  made  use  of  is  the  chief  beneficent  god 
of  the  Mayans,  Itzamna,  who  was  to  them  what  Quetzacoatl 
was  to  the  Mexicans.  Tradition  relates,  according  to  D.  G. 
Brinton,  that  "  he  came  in  his  magic  skiff  from  the  East,  across 
the  waters,  and  therefore  he  presided  over  that  quarter  of 
the  world  assigned  to  him."  His  name  meant  "  the  dew  or 
moisture  of  the  morning."  To  him  all  the  arts  are  due. 
He  was  the  god  of  their  culture,  their  arts,  their  writings  on 
stone  monuments  and  books.  His  sign  is  found  throughout 
the  codices,  in  paintings,  and  among  the  glyphs.  The  tapir 
was  his  principal  symbol,  and  to  what  does  this  fact  point  ? 
Is  it  not  possible  to  see  in  him  a  cultiue-god  coming  from 
the  East  ?  The  Buddhists  came  from  the  East ;  they  were 
the  culture-heroes  of  Central  America  ;  they  were  the  men 
who  taught  the  building  arts  and  who  possibly  introduced 
the  tapir  as  a  deity  instead  of  the  elephant  of  their  native 
country.  Thus  may  Itzamna  have  risen  the  personification 
of  their  arts  and  crafts  after  they  had  died,  the  elephant  cult 
of  Asia  being  represented  by  the  tapir. 

The  other  deities  were  but  minor  ones  compared  with 
Itzamna.  They  were  Cuculcan,  Kin-ich,  the  God  of  the 
North  Star,  the  Bee-God,  the  Bat-God,  and  Ghanan,  the  God 
of  Earth,  growth  and  fertiUty ;  Ah-Pach  (God  of  Death), 
always  depicted  in  battle  scenes  with  his  torch  or  spear  and 
flint  knife  ;  Ek  Ahau,  the  Black  God,  suggested  to  have 
been  the  god  of  the  much-cultivated  cocoa  plant,  although 
his   attitude   of  war  with  appendages  of  shield  and  spear 


314  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

does  not  quite  harmonise  with  this  suggestion  that  he  was  a 
god  of  agriculture.  In  addition  to  these  anthropomorphic 
deities  we  find  animal  life  represented  by  the  serpent,  the 
dog,  the  jaguar,  the  macaw,  deer,  armadillo,  turtle,  monkey, 
quail,  frog,  scorpion,  zopilote,  pelican,  blackbird,  and  what 
D.  G.  Brinton  has  called  his  "  fish  and  oyster  sign." 

Again,  many  are  reminiscent  of  domestic  life,  for  example, 
of  weaving,  the  spinning  whorl,  the  flint  knife  (always  denoting 
death  or  sacrifice  and  near  the  God  of  Death),  and  lastly  there 
are  those  having  reference  to  sacrificial  acts  and  the  priests' 
devotion  by  the  piercing  of  their  tongues.  Astronomical 
ideas  figure  largely  too.  Primitive  peoples  always  held  the 
heavens  in  awe.  Their  calendar  was  formed  partly  by  the 
lunations  of  the  moon  and  by  the  celestial  bodies,  and  naturally 
we  find  their  ideographs  often  portrayed.  Landa  mentions 
that  the  Mayas  measured  their  time  by  night,  "  Regianse  de 
noche,  para  conocer  la  hora,  for  el  lucero,  i  las  cobrillas  i  los 
artilegros,  de  dia,  por  media  dia." 

There  is  no  doubt  the  Mayan  knowledge  of  the  stars  was 
considerable.  The  Pleiades  and  Orion  were  watched  by  them. 
They  called  the  North  Star  Xaman  Ek  [Xaman  north  :  Ek 
star).  Their  astronomers  studied  the  course  of  the  Milky  Way 
and  the  sun  was  figured  in  the  glyphs  in  various  forms.  The 
much-discussed  Benik  sign  {Ben,  idea  :  ik,  life)  had  probably 
much  to  do  with  the  sun  ;  but  D.  G.  Brinton  believed  it  to 
more  particularly  represent  "  strength  and  deific  power," 
and  says  of  Dr.  Seler,  when  referring  to  this  glyph,  "  that  he 
is  apt  to  see  gory  human  heads  everywhere,"  because  Seler 
thought  the  glyph  represented  a  head  carried  in  a  sling  as  a 
sign  of  "  conquered  in  war." 

But  the  signs  which  have  been  most  in  dispute  are  those 
which  D.  G.  Brinton  has  called  "  Drum  Signs."  Professor  Leon 
de  Rosny  thought  these  variants  of  the  ahau  sign  ;  Professor 
Cyrus  Thomas  a  heap  of  stones  ;  Dr.  PhiUip  J.  J.  Valentin! 
a  censer  or  brazier  ;  and  Dr.  Seler  a  precious  stone.  They 
are  always  found  on  the  "  initial  "  or  cycle  glyphs  at  Copan, 
Quirigua,  and  Palenque.  D.  G.  Brinton  is  probably  correct 
in  the  christening  of  them  ;  for  they  are  exactly  like  the 
drums  which  the  Indians  possessed  at  the  coming  of  the 
Spaniards,  according  to  Father  Duran's  Historia  de  los  Indios, 
and  which  are  depicted  in  the  ancient  codices.  Thus  it  would 
seem  that  these  are  "  Drum  Signs  "  with  a  symbolical  meaning. 
Another  sign  which  has  been  the  subject  of  much  controversy 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND   PAINTINGS  315 

is  that  which  de  Rosny  and  Professor  Forstemann  are  probably 
right  in  calling  the  "  Phallus  Sign  "  ;  but  which  Abb6  Brasseur 
de  Bourbourg  thought  represented  a  gourd,  D.  G.  Brinton 
the  "  Yax  or  Feather  Ornament,"  and  Seler  a  tree  of  some 
kind.  Dr.  Schellhas  has  gone  further  and  declared  it  to  be 
the  sign  "  zapote  tree,"  the  wood  most  used  by  the  Mayans 
in  building. 

But  the  time  has  not  yet  come  when  it  is  possible  to  say 
who  is  right  or  wrong  in  the  naming  of  these  glyphs.  Up 
to  the  present  it  is  all  more  or  less  surmise  based  upon  the 
writings  of  the  Spanish  historians — such  as  Bishop  Landa. 
It  is  on  his  work  that  is  based  the  assumption  that  the  signs 
on  the  monuments  refer  chiefly  to  the  calendar.  It  is  true 
they  seem  to  be  mathematically  correct,  but  this  could  not 
be  otherwise  when  the  numberings  of  the  dates  have  been 
assigned  by  those  who  have  shown  them  to  be  correct.  The 
alphabet  which  Landa  bequeathed  us  has  been  proved  beyond 
all  question  to  be  false.  In  fact  it  is  obvious  that  no  alphabet 
can  be  formed  upon  the  glyphs,  for  there  are  hundreds  of 
signs,  some  of  which  would  appear  to  have  many  variants. 
If  his  key  to  the  actual  writing  through  his  alphabet  is  in- 
correct, there  is  good  reason  to  doubt  his  statements  as  to 
the  calendar  signs  ;  and  the  student  ought  not  to  allow  himself 
to  begin  where  others  have  finished  in  these  researches.  He 
should  first  of  all  glance  back  over  the  ground  which  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  already  covered,  and  see  for  himself 
whether  or  not  there  is  actual  proof  that  the  calendar  signs 
have  been  correctly  interpreted. 

Much  might  be  said  on  the  codices  and  books  that  have 
been  left  us  by  the  historians.  They  belong  to  two  classes 
and  two  widely  separate  dates.  The  Codices  are  the  surviving 
ancient  glyphic  writings  of  pre-Conquest  times  which  escaped 
the  Spanish  bonfires,  and  are  of  native  paper  about  ten  inches 
wide  and  of  various  lengths,  inscribed  on  both  sides,  and 
folded  zigzag-fashion  like  the  oldest  Buddhist  literature. 
The  others  are  the  books  written  in  Latin  characters  after 
the  Conquest  in  several  towns  and  villages  and  known  as  the 
"  Books  of  Chilan  Balam." 

Only  four  of  the  former  remain,  namely  the  Codex  Pere- 
sianus  in  Paris,  receiving  its  name  from  the  fact  that  the 
name  "  Perez  "  was  written  on  it  in  Latin  characters,  probably 
the  name  of  the  Spaniard  who  saved  it  from  destruction  at 


3i6  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  Conquest ;  the  Codex  Dresdensis  in  the  Museum  at 
Dresden,  from  which  it  gets  its  name  ;  and  the  Codices  Troanus 
and  Cortesianus  in  the  Madrid  Museum,  which  are  probably 
two  parts  of  the  same  book.  It  is  generally  supposed  the 
Codex  Peresianus  is  of  Tzental  origin  written  in  Guatemala, 
the  Tzentals  being  a  Guatemalan  tribe  of  the  Maya  family. 
The  Codex  Dresdensis  is  thought  to  have  been  written  at  or 
near  Palenque  ;  the  first  copy  of  it  to  be  made  public  was  in 
Lord  Kingsborough's  work  on  the  antiquities  of  Mexico. 
The  Codices  Troanus  and  Cortesianus  are  supposed  to  have  been 
written  in  Central  Yucatan  ;  and,  under  the  direction  of 
the  French  Government,  Abbe  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg  made 
many  copies  in  1869.  On  them  are  depicted  the  same  hiero- 
gl5rphical  characters  as  one  sees  on  the  monuments,  allowing 
of  course  for  the  difference  and  discrepancies  which  would 
occur  between  the  work  on  stone  and  that  on  paper. 

The  "  Books  of  the  Chilan  Balam  "  are  of  little  value. 
They  are  post-Conquest  compilations  based  on  the  narrations 
of  Indians  of  their  history,  traditions,  and  behefs.  Each 
town  or  village  at  one  time  probably  had  its  Chilan  Balam 
or  record  book  in  which  all  statements  relative  to  the  village 
were  entered.  They  were  formed  at  the  instigation  of  the 
Spanish  priests,  who  taught  the  Indians  to  write  them  in 
Latin  characters.  The  earliest  was  composed  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  but  most  were  written 
long  after  the  Conquest  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  and  had  become  much  tainted  with  the  Spanish 
prejudices.  The  best  collection  of  these  books  was  that 
made  by  D.  G.  Brinton  from  various  sources,  and  which  he 
describes  in  his  book  The  Maya  Chronicles.  But,  as  we  have 
said  before,  if  they  make  indifferently  trustworthy  sources  of 
history,  they  offer  less  help  to  the  deciphering  of  the  hiero- 
glyphics. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  the  Mayan  paintings.  The  historians 
tell  us — and  there  is  much  reason  to  believe  them — that  the 
buildings  of  Yucatan  were  often  painted  externally  in  different 
colours.  Traces  of  paint  can  be  found  to-day  on  many  of 
the  monuments.  But  it  is  not  so  much  with  the  painting  of 
the  outside  of  the  buildings  as  the  internal  mural  paintings 
that  we  shall  deal.  From  them  much  of  the  past  history  of 
the  country  can  be  gathered.  The  mode  of  life,  the  shape  of 
the  houses,  the  dress,  the  utensils  in  use  and  the  food  of  the 


HIEROGLYPHICS  AND  PAINTINGS  317 

Indians  axe  often  depicted.  Nearly  all  the  buildings  in  Yucatan 
have  traces  of  once  having  been  adorned  by  paintings  ;  but 
the  best  still  in  existence  are  those  in  the  House  of  Tigers  at 
Chichen  Itza.  Although  much  faded,  disfigured  and  defaced 
by  the  vandahsm  of  the  conquerors,  they  show  that  the  ancient 
inhabitants  of  Yucatan  had  a  good  knowledge  of  pigments 
and  mixed  them  so  well  that  to-day,  where  they  exist  at 
all,  they  are  still  bright  and  well  preserved.  They  have 
been  copied  by  various  people  ;  but  probably  the  best  re- 
production of  them  is  in  possession  of  the  American  Anti- 
quarian Society  of  Worcester,  Mass. 

In  them  is  shown  the  daily  hfe  of  the  Indians.  In  one 
scene  we  see  a  woman  seated  on  a  kanche,  a  type  of  stool 
still  in  common  use  among  the  natives  to-day.  Near  by 
her  is  her  basket  of  small  round  biscuit-like  objects  which 
would  seem  to  be  tortillas.  The  kohen  or  three-stone  fire- 
place, typical  of  Mayan  huts  to-day,  is  just  outside  the  door, 
and  on  it  a  cooking-bowl  is  standing  in  which  food  is  being 
prepared.  All  the  women  are  dressed  in  the  chemise-Uke 
garment,  the  huipil,  which  is  worn  to-day,  and  ear-ornaments 
adorn  their  ears ;  whilst  their  long,  straight,  jet-black  hair 
hangs  down  over  their  shoulders,  or  in  some  cases  is  done 
up  in  a  knot  on  the  nape  of  the  neck.  There  are  warriors, 
too,  depicted  in  battle  array  in  the  act  of  defending  a 
village,  while  the  women  are  anxiously  watching  the  result 
from  the  doors  of  their  huts.  The  warriors  are  shown  with 
their  spears  raised  and  shields  at  the  defence  ready  for  the 
oncoming  foe.  The  figures  are  very  realistic,  but  the  one  thing 
which  strikes  you  above  all  else  is  the  lack  of  proportion. 
Men  and  women  appear  as  tall  as  the  houses  in  which  they 
live,  and  which  look  mere  dolls'-houses.  We  have  spoken 
of  the  lack  of  proportion  marking  the  paintings  in  the  early 
Buddhistic  temples  in  an  earUer  chapter,  but  this  is  naturally 
common  in  all  countries  during  the  early  stages  of  develop- 
ment of  art. 

Considering  the  vandalism  to  which  the  paintings  have 
been  subject  and  the  cUmate,  it  is  clear  from  the  brightness 
of  the  paints  that  the  ancient  Mayans  had  the  secret  of 
mixing  pigments.  Nor  was  their  method  of  placing  them 
on  the  walls  to  be  despised.  This  was  the  superimposing 
of  one  colom:  on  another.  They  would  seem  to  have  first  of 
all  painted  the  entire  wall  with  the  colour  which  was  to  serve 
as  the  background  for  the  picture.      On  this  the    designs 


3i8  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

were  painted,  and  in  cases  where  more  than  one  colour  was 
employed  in  any  figure,  as  was  often  the  case,  we  found  that 
it  had  been  covered  entirely  with  the  most  prevalent  colour, 
then  overlaid  with  a  new  pigment  until  the  desired  effect 
had  been  obtained.  The  colours  used  were  yellow,  blue, 
green,  and  a  reddish  brown.  If  the  background  was  green, 
the  wall  would  first  be  entirely  covered  with  that  colour. 
If  a  figure  of  a  man  or  woman  was  to  be  depicted  it  would 
be  painted  in  reddish  brown  (the  invariable  skin-colour  in 
the  paintings),  and  the  colouring  of  the  apparel  would  be 
placed  on  the  top  of  this  ;  and  in  such  cases  as  depicting 
ornamentation  on  the  garments,  another  coating  of  a  different 
colour  would  be  placed  on  the  top  of  that.  Thus  one  commonly 
finds  three  or  four  coatings  of  paint  overlaid  on  the  base 
colour. 

It  is  from  these  paintings  that  one  can  trace  the  weapons 
used  by  the  Mayans  in  the  war  and  chase.  The  spear  or 
lance  is  much  in  evidence ;  the  short  serrated  sword  of  flint, 
examples  of  which  have  been  unearthed  among  the  ruins, 
is  often  depicted.  The  heavy  throwing-stones,  which  wrought 
much  havoc  among  the  early  Spanish  adventurers  when  they 
attacked  and  stormed  the  Mayan  cities,  and  the  short  obsidian 
knife  associated  with  those  sacrificial  orgies  that  often  took 
place  after  a  victory,  are  also  portrayed.  Again,  we  see 
shields  carried  on  the  warriors'  left  arm,  on  which  the  colour- 
token  of  their  chief  is  shown  in  the  same  way  as  our  knights 
of  old  had  painted  on  their  shields  the  arms  of  their  feudal 
lords.  When  in  battle  array  they  invariably  wear  the  thick, 
quilted  cotton  vest  reaching  from  their  necks  to  their  thighs,  so 
closely  woven  as  to  be  proof  against  the  enemy's  darts.  When 
not  in  battle  this  is  discarded  for  the  more  easygoing  uit 
or  loin-cloth.  Caciques  and  priests  are  dressed  more  ela- 
borately. We  see  the  heavy  beplumed  head-dress,  the  leg 
ornamentation  and  sandals  far  more  elaborate  than  the 
thick,  plaited,  deerskin,  two-thonged  foot-covering  of  their 
followers. 

Last  but  perhaps  not  by  any  means  least  in  importance 
among  these  paintings  is  the  much-discussed  "  red  hand." 
We  have  spoken  of  its  probable  origin  on  p.  265.  We  have 
seen  it,  as  have  others,  on  the  ruins  of  the  mainland  ;  but 
more,  we  have  found  it  on  the  walls  buried  under  the  debris 
of  fallen  roofs  in  the  islands.  The  best  examples  of  it  were 
found  by  us  at  Cozumel  in  ruins  on  which  probably  no  other 


FACADE    OF   BUILDING   AT   KABAli 


p.  318] 


HIEROGLYPHICS   AND  PAINTINGS  319 

white  man  has  ever  looked.  On  the  ruins  of  the  mainland 
it  is  rare,  but  one  ruin  we  discovered,  described  on  p.  180,  was 
literally  covered  with  this  form  of  ornamentation,  and  here 
for  the  first  time  we  realised  that  the  human  hand  was  not 
always  used.  It  was  not  always  the  impression  of  an  actual 
hand,  as  has  been  insisted  by  many,  but  of  something  of  a 
roughly  similar  shape. 

The  paintings  in  all  the  ruins  are  fast  crumbhng  away,  and 
to-day  a  gentle  tap  upon  the  walls  will  show  that  the  layers 
of  paint  are  losing  those  adhesive  qualities  which  have  held 
them  in  position  for  centuries. 

How  were  such  arts  of  writing  and  painting  attained  ? 
The  latter  question  is  easily  answered.  The  knowledge  of 
painting  in  elementary  colours  has  often  been  found  among 
the  most  inartistic  peoples  ;  but  as  we  have  said  before,  the 
mural  paintings  of  the  monuments  of  Central  America  are  so 
similar  in  design  to  those  of  the  early  Buddhist  temples  that 
if  we  are  to  believe  a  migration  to  America  took  place  in  the 
early  Middle  Ages  the  suggestion  that  the  emigrants  brought 
the  ait  of  painting  into  Central  America  with  them  is  almost 
irresistible.  But  it  is  not  so  easy  with  the  glyphs.  The 
paper  on  which  the  early  codices  were  written  and  the  way 
in  which  they  are  folded  bear  a  striking  resemblance  to  the 
early  manuscripts  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  but  as  yet  no 
counterparts  of  the  characters  which  form  the  hieroglyphics 
on  the  monuments  of  Central  America  have  been  found  in 
any  other  part  of  the  world. 

Most  writers  would  have  us  believe,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
architecture,  that  it  is  indigenous  to  the  American  continent. 
It  is  possible  that  the  invention  of  this  writing  is  the  work 
of  the  indigenes,  but  we  are  inclined  to  believe  that  the  Mayan 
hieroglyphics,  if  they  are  ever  deciphered,  will  prove  to  be 
a  combination  writing — partly  pictographic  and  indigenous 
and  partly  of  a  foreign  character.  In  Java  and  the  neigh- 
bouring islands  have  been  discovered  inscriptions  in  an  ancient 
form  of  Simda  writing.  These  have  never  been  deciphered, 
and  they  are  in  certain  particulars  reminiscent  of  some  of 
the  markings  on  the  glyphs. 

But  it  may  be  that  for  the  foreign  element,  if  there  be  one, 
students  would  have  to  look  even  further  east.  Archaeology 
is  as  yet  but  a  new  science.  There  is  much  work  to  be  done 
in  the  Malay  Peninsula  and  the  Eastern  Archipelago  before 
the   monuments   of   Cambodia   and   Indo-China   have    been 


300  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

explained.  Archaeologically  this  region  has  been  little  touched 
The  unsettled  condition  of  the  Independent  Malay  States, 
the  indolence  of  the  natives,  the  unhealthiness  of  the  kampongs 
or  villages,  and  the  hostility  of  the  tribes  of  the  interior  as 
well  as  the  difficulties  of  transport  have  helped  to  keep  the 
explorer  away.  But  these  difficulties  are  gradually  disappear- 
ing, and  in  the  near  future  some  enthusiast  who  has  the  time 
and  money  will  perhaps  turn  his  attention  to  this  field,  when 
his  name  may  once  and  for  all  become  immortal  in  the  annals 
of  science  as  the  discoverer  of  the  cradle-land  of  the  American 
Indian  calculiform  writing,  at  the  same  time  linking  the  Old 
World  for  ever  with  the  New. 


CHAPTER    XIX 

SLAVERY   ON   THE   HACIENDAS 

OCOCH— I— NOS  !  Coch— i— n-o-o-s  !  " 
You  wake  and  turn  in  your  hammock.  Through 
the  verandah  doorway  the  breath  of  mom  comes  chill  to  you. 
The  stars  twinkle  still,  and  the  orange  trees  are  blots  of  black 
shadow  in  the  quiet  garden.  And  then  there  comes  to  you, 
again  and  again  repeated,  the  haunting  melody  of  this  cry, 
the  reveille  of  the  hacienda.  The  Indians  are  herding  the 
pigs  ;  but  if  they  called  "  O  pigs!  O  pigs!  "  there  would  be 
none  of  the  romance  that  there  is  in  this  long-drawn  weird 
cry  "  O  Cochinos  !  " 

Outside  in  the  yard  a  hustling  crowd  of  pigs  worry  round 
a  heap  of  pumpkin  gourds.  In  the  semi-darkness  the  bare- 
legged Indians  with  scarlet  blankets  wrapped  round  them 
move  to  and  fro  ;  the  boys  chasing  the  pigs  and  the  fowls,  and 
the  men  foddering  the  mules  and  horses  in  the  corral.  Thus 
does  every  hacienda  throughout  Yucatan  awake  to  its  day's 
work.  While  it  is  still  dark  the  Indian  famihes  tumble  out 
of  their  hammocks,  and  the  housewife  builds  a  little  wood 
fire  in  the  blackened  ring  of  stones  on  the  earth  floor  which 
serves  for  kitchen  range.  The  coffee  is  boiled,  and,  crouching 
round  on  their  hams,  the  family  drink  it  black  and  munch  the 
coarse  tortillas  of  yesterday's  baking.  Then  the  boys  herd 
the  "  cochinos,"  and  the  men,  if  it  is  a  ranch  where  cattle  are 
kept,  straggle  out  into  the  woods  and  "  round  up  "  the  cows, 
driving  them  into  the  yard  to  be  milked.  But  this  is  rare, 
for  there  is  very  httle  milking  done  in  Yucatan,  partly  because 
as  a  drink  milk  is  not  appreciated  by  the  Yucatecans,  or 
indeed  by  the  Indians ;  and  partly  because  such  pasture  as 
exists  is  of  the  coarsest  kind  and  the  cows  are  nearly  always 
dry. 

When  you  have  seen  one  hacienda  you  have  seen  them  all, 
allowing  of  course  for  the  difference  in  size.     A  large  rambling, 

33«  21 


322  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

one-storeyed  stuccoed  house  raised  on  a  small  terrace,  with  a 
wide  arcaded  stone  verandah  in  front,  and  standing  in  a  huge 
yard  bordered  by  grey  stone  walls,  its  surface  the  natural 
earth  and  rock,  its  entrance  usually  a  pretentious  archway, 
almost  ecclesiastical  in  its  pitch  and  size.  Round  the  yard 
cluster  the  huts  of  the  Indians,  the  corral  for  the  mules,  stables 
and  what  not.  Most  of  these  haciendas,  at  any  rate  those 
deep  in  the  country,  have  a  very  shabby  and  down-at-heel 
appearance.  Between  the  pompous  gateway  the  iron  gates 
have  sagged  off  their  hinges  or  are  missing  altogether,  their 
place  being  taken  by  two  hurdles  fastened  together  by  ropes 
or  loops  improvised  out  of  lianas.  But  just  around  Merida, 
where  are  the  haciendas  of  the  richest  of  the  henequen  lords, 
much  has  been  done  of  late  to  turn  these  farms  into  lordly 
pleasure-houses.  Money  is  no  object  to  the  Yucatecan  land- 
lord ;  and  his  apathy  or  want  of  taste  is  all  that  can  set  limits 
to  the  beautifymg  of  his  country  seat.  At  the  hacienda  of 
Yaxche,  eighteen  miles  out  of  the  capital,  we  saw  a  good  proof 
of  what  money  can  do  in  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  land-owner. 
One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  in  Yucatan  is  the  lack  of  feed. 
Grass,  as  we  know  it,  will  not  grow,  and  the  best  that  can  be 
done  for  the  cattle  is  to  provide  them  with  a  coarse  clover. 
At  Yaxche  two  large  paddocks  had  been  planted  with  this, 
and  were  watered  by  a  contrivance  which  had  cost  no  less 
than  £30,000.  Into  several  large  round  galvanised  water- 
towers  erected  on  iron  trelliswork  standards  thirty  feet  high, 
the  water  is  pumped  from  the  limestone  wells  by  steam.  From 
these  large  tanks  pipes  lead  out  to  feed  smaller  ones  running 
in  parallel  rows  from  one  end  of  the  field  to  the  other  at  dis- 
tances of  about  six  yards  apart.  Every  twenty  yards  along  these 
smaU  pipes  a  standard  is  erected  about  five  feet  high,  on  the 
top  of  which  is  a  rose  like  that  on  a  gardener's  watering-pot. 
When  the  water  is  turned  on  at  the  tanks  the  pressure  attained 
from  its  height  forces  it  along  the  pipes  up  through  the 
standards,  and  a  few  seconds  later  the  whole  field  is  being 
deluged  with  an  artificial  rainfall  as  if  from  a  myriad  fountains. 
Three  times  a  day  the  clover  crop  is  thus  watered. 

By  the  time  the  sun  is  up,  the  cattle  have  been  tended 
and  the  Indians  are  off  to  the  milpas  or  the  henequen  fields. 
The  description  of  the  latter  we  leave  to  Chapter  XXL,  where 
we  give  an  account  of  the  whole  henequen  industry.  Apart 
from  this  comparatively  artificial  product,  maize  is  to-day  what 
it  has  always  been  for  the  Peninsula,  what  it  was  to  the  Mayans 


SLAVERY   ON   THE   HACIENDAS  323 

four  centuries  back,  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  Yucatecan  agri- 
culture. The  Indian  is  a  poor  farmer.  He  has  not  moved 
with  the  times.  It  is  true  that  in  many  localities  he  has  not 
had  the  chance  ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  he  would  not  take 
the  chance  if  it  offered.  The  plough  is  unknown,  and  if  a 
benevolent  society  was  formed  with  the  object  of  presenting 
one  to  each  Indian  labourer,  he  would  not  be  able  to  use  it 
because  of  the  nature  of  the  soil,  which  is  for  the  most  part  a 
very  thin  layer  of  earth  on  a  rock  bed,  and  also  because  he 
never  takes  the  trouble  to  properly  clear  the  ground.  An 
Indian-corn  field  would  give  an  Essex  corn-grower  a  shock 
from  which  his  constitution  would  never  raUy. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  the  farmer  in  Yucatan  sets 
about  making  his  maize-patch.  Each  or  at  least  every  second 
year  a  new  piece  must  be  claimed  from  the  dense  woodland, 
for  the  poorness  of  the  soil  does  not  allow  more  than  two  crops 
to  follow  each  other.  The  commonest  method  is  to  first  clear 
the  patch  by  cutting  down  the  trees  one  season  for  the  next. 
After  this  has  been  done,  the  timber  is  allowed  to  lie  where 
it  falls  and  rot  during  the  rainy  months.  When  the  dry 
season  comes  the  whole  fallen  timber  is  set  on  fire  and  all  but 
the  largest  of  the  trees  are  burnt,  the  charred  remains  of  these 
lying  in  all  directions  year  after  year.  The  second  method, 
apparently  the  most  ancient  and  that  still  used  by  the  present- 
day  independent  Indians,  is  to  fire  the  forest  at  the  end  of  the 
dry  season  in  May  just  as  it  stands,  cutting  down  the  large 
tnmks  that  escape  the  flames  about  a  yard  from  their  base, 
and  letting  them  lie  where  they  fall.  In  this  condition  the 
Indian  considers  that  his  patch  is  ready.  To  view  it  after 
having  been  used  to  EngUsh  fields  is  at  once  rather  a  strange 
and  depressing  experience.  Charred  tree-trunks  lie  scattered 
in  all  directions.  Trees-trunks  that  have  been  cut  off  a  yard 
or  so  from  the  ground  stand  up  Hke  the  piles  of  a  pier  at  a 
watering  place  after  a  heavy  gale  in  which  the  deck  of  the  pier 
has  been  carried  away.  Huge  boulders  and  stones  of  all  sizes 
are  scattered  over  the  soil,  making  the  use  of  machinery  abso- 
lutely impossible.  But  to  the  native  of  Yucatan  it  seems 
ready  enough,  and  as  soon  as  there  comes  the  first  heavy  rain- 
fall at  the  opening  of  the  wet  season,  the  Indians  go  out  to  the 
fields  to  plant  the  com.  This  is  all  done  by  hand,  being  dibbled 
in  much  the  same  way  as  is  often  seen  in  the  Fen  districts  of 
England,  when  a  cottager  has  a  patch  too  small  to  get  a  corn- 
drill  to  work.    The  rest  is  "on  the  lap  of  the  gods,"  though 


324  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  Indian  has  Httle  reason  for  anxiety.  For  the  rain  is  sure 
to  come,  and  then  the  sun  baking  down  on  his  sodden  milpas 
vsdll  bring  up,  as  if  by  magic,  the  long  green  shoot  presently 
to  swell  out  into  a  golden  yellow  crown  of  leaf  shrouding  the 
cob. 

The  Indian  harvest  is  about  our  Christmas  time,  and  the 
labourers  troop  into  the  milpas,  wicker  baskets  slung  on  their 
brown  backs,  and  pick  the  cobs,  dropping  them  over  their 
shoulders  into  the  baskets.  Milpas  are  seldom  of  any  great 
size,  and  the  harvester  usually  carries  his  load  back  to  the 
hacienda  when  he  returns  thither  for  his  first  real  meal  of  the 
day,  which  he  takes  between  ten  and  eleven.  His  menu  is 
of  the  simplest,  monotonously  the  same  from  year  end  to  year 
end  ;  just  that  fare  upon  which  his  lowlier  ancestors  toiled 
in  the  sun  to  build  pyramid  and  temple.  Black  beans,  always 
black  beans  ;  sometimes  crushed  into  a  purple-black  pulp, 
sometimes  frizzled  in  lard,  sometimes  with  a  thin  vegetable 
soup,  the  stock, — pork,  peppers,  garlic,  and  a  slice  or  two  of 
pumpkin  gourd.  To  this  staple  dish  of  frijoles  there  is  very 
seldom  added  any  meat  save  when  he  has  been  able  to  bag  a 
chachalaka  on  his  tramp  to  the  milpas  or  a  hacienda  pig  has 
been  killed.  Tortillas  and  coffee,  not  always  the  latter,  com- 
plete his  meal.  Before  the  hour  of  noon  he  is  back  at  his  work 
till  about  five,  when  his  day's  labour  is  over. 

There  is  no  hardship  in  all  this.  It  is  just  the  simple  life 
his  race  has  always  lived,  and  that  which  the  average  Mayan 
always  would  wish  to  live.  There  would  be  no  hardship  if — 
and  it  is  a  large,  large  IF — the  patient  toiler  were  a  free  man. 
The  Yucatecans  have  a  cruel  proverb,  "  Los  Indios  no  oigan 
sino  por  las  nalgas  "  ("  The  Indians  can  hear  only  with  their 
backs").  The  Spanish  half-breeds  have  taken  a  race  once 
noble  enough  and  broken  them  on  the  wheel  of  a  tyranny  so 
brutal  that  the  heart  of  them  is  dead.  The  relations  between 
the  two  peoples  is  ostensibly  that  of  master  and  servant ;  but 
Yucatan  is  rotten  with  a  foul  slavery — the  fouler  and  blacker 
because  of  its  hypocrisy  and  pretence. 

The  peonage  system  of  Spanish  America,  as  specious  and 
treacherous  a  plan  as  was  ever  devised  for  race-degradation, 
is  that  by  which  a  farm  labourer  is  legally  bound  to  work 
for  the  land-owner,  if  in  debt  to  him,  until  that  debt  is  paid. 
Nothing  could  sound  fairer  :  nothing  could  lend  itself  better 
to  the  blackest  abuse.  In  Yucatan  every  Indian  peon  is 
in  debt  to   his   Yucatecan   master.     Why  ?     Because  every 


SLAVERY   ON   THE   HACIENDAS  325 

Indian  is  a  spendthrift  ?  Not  at  all ;  but  because  the 
master's  interest  is  to  get  him  and  keep  him  in  debt.  This 
is  done  in  two  ways.  The  plantation-slave  must  buy  the 
necessaries  of  his  humble  life  at  the  plantation  store,  where 
care  is  taken  to  charge  such  prices  as  are  beyond  his  humble 
earnings  of  sixpence  a  day.  Thus  he  is  always  in  debt  to 
the  farm  ;  and  if  an  Indian  is  discovered  to  be  scraping 
together  the  few  dollars  he  owes,  the  books  of  the  hacienda 
are  "  cooked," — yes,  deliberately  "  cooked," — and  when  he  pre- 
sents himself  before  the  magistrate  to  pay  his  debt,  say,  of 
twenty  dollars  (£2)  the  haciendado  can  show  scored  against 
him  a  debt  of  fifty  dollars.  The  Indian  pleads  that  he  does 
not  owe  it.  The  haciendado-court  smiles.  The  word  of  an 
Indian  cannot  prevail  against  the  Senor's  books,  it  murmurs 
sweetly,  and  back  to  his  slave-work  the  miserable  peon  must 
go,  first  to  be  cruelly  flogged  to  teach  him  that  freedom  is  not 
for  such  as  he,  and  that  struggle  as  he  may  he  will  never  escape 
the  cruel  master  who  under  law  as  at  present  administered  in 
Yucatan  has  as  complete  a  disposal  of  his  body  as  of  one  of 
the  pigs  which  root  around  in  the  hacienda  yard. 

It  is  only  by  a  comparison  of  the  law  of  debt  in  Yucatan 
for  a  white  man,  as  the  Yucatecans  love  to  call  themselves, 
that  one  can  realise  how  wickedly  unjust  all  this  is,  and  how 
dehberate  is  the  conspiracy  to  keep  the  Indian  in  a  bondage 
which  spells  fortune  to  his  master.  For  the  Yucatecan  debtor 
there  appears  to  be  no  pimishment  and  no  means  of  com- 
pelling him  to  pay.  Here  is  a  case  in  point.  To  a  store  in 
Merida  comes  a  Yucatecan  who,  falsely  representing  himself 
as  employed  by  one  of  the  richest  of  Meridan  merchant-houses, 
gets  a  typewriting  machine  valued  at  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  dollars,  on  credit.  He  goes  off  with  it,  and  at  once  sells  it. 
For  thus  obtaining  money  by  false  pretences  he  is  not  punished, 
nor  can  the  defrauded  shopkeeper  recover  his  goods  or  their 
value  except  by  tedious  processes  which  will  cost  him  more 
than  he  has  already  lost,  even  if  he  wins  the  day.  Now,  had 
this  thief  been  an  Indian,  he  could  have  been  instantly  arrested, 
his  debt  sold  by  the  shopman  to  any  haciendado,  and  the 
feUow  would  have  become  a  slave  for  life.  Thus  is  law  meted 
out  by  the  Yucatecan  conspirators. 

The  Yucatecan  milhonaires  are  very  sensitive  on  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery,  and  well  they  may  be  :  for  their  record  is  as 
black  as  Legree's  in  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  You  have  but  to 
mention  the  word  "  slavery,"  and  they  begin  a  lot  of  cringing 


3a6  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

apologetics  as  to  the  comforts  of  the  Indians'  hves,  the  care 
taken  of  them,  and  the  fatherly  relations  existing  between  the 
haciendado  and  his  slaves.  Very  fatherly  indeed,  as  we  shall 
shortly  demonstrate  !  They  take  just  so  much  care  of  the 
Indians  as  reasonably  prudent  men  always  take  of  their  live 
stock ;   so  much  and  no  more. 

We  have  spoken  earlier  of  the  recent  visit  paid  to  the  country 
by  President  Diaz.  It  was  the  first  time  during  the  whole 
of  his  long  reign  that  the  great  man  had  troubled  himself  about 
the  limestone  peninsula  which  forms  the  furthermost  eastern  part 
of  his  dominions,  and  the  trembling  Yucatecans  looked  to  the 
bolts  of  the  cupboard  in  which  the  family  skeleton  was  hidden, 
and  they  were  not  over-satisfied  with  those  bolts.  They  had 
new  locks  made  and  new  and  thicker  doors  fixed  so  that  august 
presidential  ears  should  not  be  offended  by  the  rattling  of 
those  most  unfortunate  bones.  With  their  teeth  chattering, 
they  hastened  to  put  their  house  in  order  and  sweep  and  garnish 
it,  for  they  knew  quite  well  that  the  eyes  into  which  they  had 
to  throw  dust  were  eyes  which  could  see  further  than  most 
eyes.  It  was  all  the  fault  of  a  snobbish  governor.  Many  a 
henequen  lord  must  have  cursed  the  self-importance  of  their 
parvenu  chief  which  had  induced  in  him  such  discontent  with 
the  Spartan-like  simpHcity  of  his  rule  at  Merida  that  he  must 
needs  wish  to  entertain  presidential  guests  and  bask  in  the 
sunshine  of  the  mighty  Diaz's  approval.  Diaz,  they  knew 
very  well,  cared  little  or  nothing  for  Indians  qua  Indians.  But 
Diaz  cares  immensely  about  the  fair  name  of  Mexico,  which 
they  knew  they  had  done  for  years  all  they  could  to  besmirch. 
Would  he  see  the  skeleton  through  the  fatal  door  ?  If  money 
and  bribery  were  of  any  avail,  those  slave-owners  would  see 
to  it  that  their  terrible  ruler  should  be  fooled.  But  they  had 
to  calculate  on  more  than  his  natural  perspicacity.  There 
was  much  reason  to  believe  that  ugly  rumours  had  reached 
Mexico  City  of  the  slavery  rife  in  Yucatan,  and  that  the  Presi- 
dent's visit  was  not  unconnected  with  these.  That  skeleton 
must  be  cemented  into  its  cupboard  with  the  cement  of 
millions  of  dollars  if  necessary. 

Well,  the  President  came.  Never  were  there  such  junket- 
ings :  night  was  turned  into  day  ;  roadways  were  garlanded  ; 
gargantuan  feasts  were  served.  Lucullus  never  entertained 
Caesar  with  more  gorgeous  banquets  than  the  henequen  lords 
of  Merida  spread  before  Diaz,  Small  fortunes  were  spent  on 
single  meals.    One  luncheon  party  cost  50,000  dollars  :    a 


SLAVERY   ON   THE    HACIENDAS  327 

dinner  cost  60,000,  and  so  on.  The  ofiftcial  report  of  the  recep- 
tion reads  like  a  piece  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights.  In  their 
eagerness  to  keep  that  skeleton  in  its  cupboard  some  of  the 
haciendados  actually  mortgaged  their  estates.  One  of  the 
most  notable  of  the  entertainments  provided  was  that  of  a 
luncheon  at  a  hacienda  ninety  miles  south-east  of  the  city  of 
Merida.  At  the  station  where  the  President  alighted  for  the 
drive  to  the  farm,  the  roadway  was  strewn  with  flowers. 
Triumphal  arches  of  flowers  and  laurels,  of  henequen,  and 
one  built  of  oranges  surmounted  by  the  national  flag,  spanned 
the  route.  The  farm -workers  lined  the  avenue  of  nearly  two 
miles  to  the  house,  waving  flags  and  strewing  the  road  with 
flowers,  while  a  feu-de-joie  of  signal  rockets  was  fired  on  his 
ahghting  from  his  carriage.  He  then  made  a  tour  of  the  farm. 
Having  inspected  the  henequen  machinery  he  (we  quote  from 
the  ofiicial  report)  "  visited  the  hospital  of  the  finca,  and  the 
large  chapel  where  the  Catholic  labourers  worshipped  ;  the 
gardens  and  the  beautiful  orchard  of  fruit  trees  ;  and  during 
his  tour  of  inspection  he  honoured  several  labourers  by  visiting 
their  huts  thatched  with  pahn-leaf  and  standing  in  their  own 
grounds  weU  cultivated  by  the  occupants.  More  than  two 
hundred  such  houses  constitute  the  beautiful  village  of  this 
hacienda,  which  breathes  an  atmosphere  of  general  happiness. 
Without  doubt  a  beautiful  spectacle  is  offered  to  the  visitor  to 
this  lovely  finca  with  its  straight  roads,  its  pretty  village 
clustering  round  the  central  building  surrounded  by  gardens 
of  flower  and  fruit  trees." 

At  the  luncheon  the  President  in  the  course  of  his  speech 
said : — "  Only  can  a  visitor  here  realise  the  energy  and  per- 
severance which,  continued  through  so  many  years,  has 
resulted  in  all  I  have  seen.  Some  writers  who  do  not  know 
this  country,  who  have  not  seen,  as  I  have,  the  labourers, 
have  declared  Yucatan  to  be  disgraced  with  slavery.  Their 
statements  are  the  grossest  calumny,  as  is  proved  by  the  very 
faces  of  the  labourers,  by  their  tranquil  happiness.  He  who 
is  a  slave  necessarily  looks  very  different  from  those  labourers 
I  have  seen  in  Yucatan."  The  prolonged  cheers  and  measure- 
less enthusiasm  evoked  by  these  words  (one  can  understand 
how  the  conspirators  chuckled  at  the  success  of  their  efforts 
at  deception)  were  agreeably  interrupted  by  the  appearance 
of  an  old  Indian,  who  made  a  speech  of  welcome  in  his  own 
language,  presenting  a  bouquet  of  wild  flowers  and  a  photo- 
graphic album  fiUed  with  views  of  the  hacienda.     It  is  not 


328  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

necessary  to  quote  the  fulsome  stuff  which  had  been  placed 
in  the  mouth  of  the  poor  old  man  by  his  master.  It  is  simply 
a  string  of  meaningless  compliments  which  ends  with  these 
words  :  "  We  kiss  your  hands  ;  we  hope  that  you  may  live  many 
years  for  the  good  of  Mexico  and  her  States,  among  which  is 
proud  to  reckon  itself  the  ancient  and  indomitable  [surely 
a  pathetic  adjective  under  the  circumstances]  land  of  the 
Mayans."  Well  may  the  official  report  say  that  "it  is  only 
justice  to  declare  that  the  preparations  of  the  feast  and  the 
decorations  of  the  finca  showed  that  the  proprietor  had  been 
anxious  to  prepare  everything  with  the  most  extraordinary 
magnificence." 

This  feast  was  a  gigantic  fraud,  a  colossally  impertinent 
fake  from  start  to  finish.  Preparations  indeed  !  That  is  the 
exact  word  to  describe  the  lavish  entertainments  of  Mexico's 
ruler  here  and  elsewhere  in  Yucatan.  Tens  of  thousands  of 
dollars  were  lavished  to  guard  the  haciendados'  secrets.  In 
this  particular  case  the  huts  of  the  Indian  labourers  which 
the  President  visited  were  "  fake  "  huts.  They  had  been, 
every  one  of  them,  if  not  actually  built  for  the  occasion, 
cleaned,  whitewashed,  and  metamorphosed  beyond  recognition. 
They  had  been  furnished  with  American  bent  wood  furniture. 
Every  Indian  matron  had  been  given  a  sewing-machine  ;  every 
Indian  lass  had  been  trimmed  out  with  finery  and  in  some  cases, 
it  is  said,  actually  provided  with  European  hats.  The  model 
village  round  which  the  President  was  escorted  was  the  fraud 
of  a  day  ;  no  sooner  was  his  back  turned  than  to  the  shops 
of  Merida  were  returned  sewing-machines,  furniture,  hats  and 
everything,  and  the  Indians  relapsed  again  into  that  simplicity 
of  fumitureless  life  which  they  probably  cordially  preferred. 

We  are  not  quoting  the  "  faking  "  of  this  village  as  an 
example  of  hardship  dealt  out  to  the  Indians,  but  as  a  proof 
of  the  ludicrous  efforts  made  by  those  whose  fortunes  have 
been  and  are  being  built  on  slave  labour  to  hide  the  truth  from 
General  Diaz.  As  for  the  poor  old  Mayan  who  addressed 
him,  and  as  for  the  deputations  of  whip-drilled  Indians  who 
were  paraded  before  him  to  express  their  untold  happiness 
and  loyalty,  they  very  well  knew  that  they  had  got  to  do 
exactly  what  they  were  told  to  do.  We  are  not  exaggerating 
when  we  state  that  it  would  have  cost  any  Indian  his  life  to 
have  even  attempted  to  make  General  Diaz  aware  of  the  truth. 
No  Indian  throughout  civihsed  Yucatan  could  have  been  found 
to  make  the  attempt.     For  nothing  is  sadder  than  the  lack  of 


SLAVERY   ON   THE    HACIENDAS  329 

all  manliness  and  spirit  which  characterises  the  average  Indian 
workman.  It  is  the  story  of  the  Russian  moujik  over  again. 
There  is  no  combination  or  loyalty  to  each  other  among  the 
hacienda  Indians  ;  and  this  is  what  makes  possible  what  we 
are  about  to  relate. 

If  the  hardship  of  the  Indians'  lot  was  merely  slavery,  it 
might  be  argued  that  there  were  slender  grounds  for  our  indict- 
ment. Slavery  may  under  certain  circumstances  be  far  from 
an  evil,  where  the  backward  condition  of  a  race  is  such  as  to 
justify  its  temporary  existence,  and  where  the  slave-owner 
can  be  trusted.  But  the  slave-owner  can  very  seldom  be 
trusted,  and  he  certainly  cannot  be  in  Yucatan.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  the  enslavement  of  the  Indians  of 
Yucatan  never  has  had,  never  can  have,  justification.  Con- 
ceived in  an  unholy  alliance  between  the  Church  and  brute 
force,  it  has  grown  with  the  centuries  into  a  race-degradation 
which  has  as  its  only  objects  the  increasing  of  the  milUons  of 
the  slave-owners  and  the  gratification  of  their  foul  lusts.  The 
social  condition  of  Yucatan  to-day  represents  as  infamous  a 
conspiracy  to  exploit  and  prostitute  a  whole  race  as  the  history 
of  the  world  affords.  Yucatan  is  governed  by  a  group  of 
millionaire  monopolists  whose  interests  are  identical,  banded 
together  to  deny  all  justice  to  the  Indians,  who,  if  need  be,  are 
treated  in  a  way  an  Enghshman  would  blush  to  treat  his  dog. 
*'  The  Indians  hear  only  with  their  backs."  Yes,  but  the 
ill-treatment  of  the  poor  wretches  often  does  not  end  with  a 
whipping :  it  ends  in  murder.  We  will  give  particulars  of 
some  cases. 

Some  years  ago  an  Indian  was  thrashed  to  death  on  the 
estate  of  the  brother  of  a  high  official  in  Yucatan.  The  body 
was  easily  disposed  of,  buried  at  night  like  a  dog's.  But 
some  of  his  fellow-workmen  talked,  it  seems,  and  news  of  the 
crime  found  its  way  to  the  capital.  There  a  young  lawyer, 
Perez  Escofee,  indignant  at  the  report,  took  a  solicitor  down 
to  the  hacienda  and  got  from  some  of  the  Indians  affidavits 
as  to  their  knowledge  of  the  murder.  Armed  with  these  he 
pubhshed  the  facts  in  the  Merida  newspaper,  demanding  an 
investigation.  The  haciendado  concerned  sent  his  soHcitor 
down  and  obtained  from  the  very  Indians  sworn  contrary 
statements.  On  these  Perez,  his  adviser,  and  the  editor  who 
had  had  the  courage  to  publish  Escofee's  first  appeal,  were 
arrested  and  thrown  into  prison.  That  is  three  years  and 
more  ago,  and  Escofee  and  his  lawyer  were  still  in  Merida 


330  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

prison  without  trial  at  the4:inie  of  our  visit,  if  our  information 
be  correct.  The  haciendado's  family  dares  not  allow,  and 
has  so  far  proved  powerful  enough  to  prevent,  a  trial.  The 
third  man  was  liberated  owing  to  very  influential  friends 
who  threatened  exposure  if  he  were  not  released. 

Another  loathsome  case  was  that  of  the  beating  to  death 
of  an  Indian  girl  of  eleven  by  her  old  Yucatecan  mistress. 
The  poor  child  had  been  guilty  of  some  trifling  disobedience, 
and  the  murderess,  having  plenty  of  money,  had  no  difficulty 
in  getting  an  order  for  burial,  the  death  being  announced  as 
due  to  pneumonia.  The  truth  would  never  have  come  out 
but  for  the  prattling  of  the  granddaughter  of  this  human 
beast  who,  child-like,  told  some  neighbours.  Yucatecan 
mistresses  beat  their  Indian  servants  mercilessly  for  slight 
faults  ;  but  it  will  scarcely  seem  credible  to  English  readers 
that  Yucatecans  are  so  lost  to  all  sense  of  manliness  that  they, 
too,  are  often  guilty  of  the  basest  cruelty  towards  the  women 
servants.  We  heard  of  one  case  where  a  Yucatecan,  because 
the  Indian  girl  was  a  little  late  in  bringing  him  his  early  break- 
fast of  milk  and  bread,  threw  in  her  face  the  jug  of  boiling 
milk,  and  beat  her  over  the  head  with  the  long  stick  of  crusty 
roll  till  she  was  unconscious.  For  such  cowardly  curs  there  is 
no  punishment.  In  this  case  the  poor  girl  confessed  to  a 
friend  that  for  days  she  had  murder  in  her  heart,  and  this 
feeling  of  revenge  worried  her  so  that  at  last  she  went  to  the 
priest  for  advice.  That  worthy  told  her  she  must  be  docile  : 
that  she  must  submit  herself  in  all  things  to  her  master. 
This  is  really  the  worst  feature  of  the  conspiracy  to  degrade 
the  Indians,  the  part  the  Church  plays.  The  priests  back  up 
the  haciendados  in  everything  because  it  is  from  them  they 
get  their  money. 

Another  outrageous  case  was  that  in  which  a  very  rich 
Yucatecan  was  concerned.  Because  his  Indian  driver  did 
not  go  quick  enough  to  please  him,  he  thrashed  him  into 
unconsciousness  in  the  street,  and  afterwards  had  him  put 
in  prison  on  some  trumped-up  charge  for  six  months.  This 
case,  however,  was  so  public,  many  passers  witnessing  the 
grossness  of  the  assault,  that  the  family  found  it  necessary  to 
come  to  terms  with  the  injured  man. 

It  would  not  be  at  all  true  to  say  that  the  Indians  are 
often  beaten  to  death.  Labour  is  far  too  scarce  in  Yucatan. 
A  perfect  network  of  regulations  and  laws  are  in  force  on  all 
the  haciendas  to  keep  the  Indians.    The  unfortunate  wretches 


SLAVERY   ON   THE   HACIENDAS  331 

are  absolutely  essential  to  the  fortune-getting  of  the  Yucate- 
cans,  and  are  far  too  precious  to  be  recklessly  killed  off.  The 
haciendas  are  regarded  as  excellent  breeding  grounds  for  new 
generations  of  slaves.  Thus  a  rule  is  that  no  Indian  of  either 
sex  shall  marry  off  the  hacienda.  The  real  truth  is  that  the 
Indians  are  nothing  but  cattle,  and  just  as  much  the  property 
of  their  master  as  the  heifers  in  a  farmyard  in  England  belong 
to  the  farmer.  To  a  friend  of  ours  an  Indian  came,  saying 
he  owed  his  master  one  hundred  doUars,  and  begging  that  his 
debt  might  be  paid  and  that  he  might  come  to  work  for  him. 
Well,  our  friend  agreed  to  pay  his  debt.  Then  round  comes 
the  master  to  say  that  the  man  really  owed  him  three  hundred 
and  forty  dollars — which  of  course  was  a  lie,  to  be  supported, 
if  need  be,  by  forged  entries  in  the  hacienda  books.  He 
further  says  he  will  not  accept  payment,  as  he  wishes  to  get 
the  man  back  and  whip  him  publicly  to  make  an  example  of 
him.  The  man  said  he  would  rather  die  than  go  back  ;  and 
it  ended  by  the  master,  fearful  lest  the  slave  should  kill  himself, 
selling  him  for  his  debt  to  another  haciendado,  who,  in  turn, 
would  get  all  the  work  he  could  out  of  the  poor  devil.  Thus, 
though  there  is  no  open  slave  market  in  Merida,  these  cowardly 
slave-owners  traffic  in  their  slaves  at  their  own  free  will,  and 
there  is  literally  no  escape  for  the  Indians. 

There  are  three  reasons  for  the  continuance  of  this  cruel 
system.  First,  the  prostitution  of  the  Church  to  the  hacien- 
dados.  Superstitious  to  a  degree  remarkable  even  among  the 
many  semi-civiUsed  peoples  who  have  been  victimised  by 
Catholicism,  the  Mayans  look  to  their  priests  as  semi-divinities 
whose  word  is  law ;  and  a  debauched  priesthood,  eager  to 
make  friends  with  the  Mammon  of  Unrighteousness,  and  them- 
selves unscrupulous  in  self-indulgence,  greedily  support  slavery. 

Secondly,  the  lack  of  loyalty  among  the  Indians  to 
each  other.  This  is  the  natural  effect  of  the  centuries  of 
oppression  which  they  have  endured.  All  the  manliness  of 
the  race,  all  the  spirit  and  nobility  of  a  nature  which  wrung 
a  tribute  even  from  Spanish  historians,  have  been  effectually 
crushed  out  of  them.  This  is  indeed  the  saddest  side  of  it  all. 
The  Yucatecan  bullies  have  done  their  work  so  well  that  if 
the  Indians  of  all  the  haciendas  could  be  asked  whether  they 
were  contented,  a  large  majority,  possibly  almost  all,  would 
apathetically  declare  themselves  content.  They  are  like 
prisoners  who  have  been  so  long  in  the  gloom  of  a  dungeon 
that  they  would  be  actually  terrified  of  the  sunshine. 


332  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

And  thirdly,  the  water  supply  is  an  enormous  auxiliary  in 
the  maintaining  of  the  present  disgraceful  state  of  affairs.  As 
we  have  said,  there  are  no  rivers  in  Yucatan,  and  the  only 
water  available  is  that  obtained  from  the  cenotes  or  wells 
attached  to  the  haciendas.  Practically  you  may  say  that 
the  whole  water  supply  of  the  country  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
landlords.  To  leave  one  farm  would  only  mean  going  to 
another  for  the  miserable  serf.  Each  haciendado  helps  every 
other  in  keeping  the  slaves  on  the  places.  Thus,  turn  where 
he  may,  the  Indian  has  no  refuge  but  the  woods,  from  which 
he  would  be  hunted  with  dogs  just  as  Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe  has 
told  us  was  always  done  in  the  South. 

He  submits  to  his  fate  ;  but  hard  as  we  have  shown  that 
to  be,  there  is  worse  to  be  told.  A  slave,  with  a  wage  which 
is  a  mockery,  a  pittance,  given  really  to  make  more  plausible 
the  case  of  his  master,  he  must  see  his  daughters  submit  to  a 
systematic  tyranny  of  lust  which  is  really  so  base  that  it  is 
difficult  to  write  of  it  in  cahn  language.  Here  in  Yucatan 
every  sexual  horror  which  in  the  story  of  the  South  in  the 
'sixties  horrified  the  world  is  reproduced,  cloaked  by  the 
foulest  hypocrisy.  The  Indian  from  her  childhood  up  is  the 
prey  of  the  haciendado  and  his  sons.  From  their  foul  clutches 
she  cannot  escape.  If  her  father  had,  poor  devil,  any 
scruples  left,  he  must  stifle  them  or  be  prepared  to  risk  his 
life  by  objecting.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  so  immoral  and 
degraded  have  almost  all  the  hacienda  Indians  become, 
that  objections  to  this  droit  du  Seigneur,  this  Jus  Primae 
Noctis,  are  almost  unheard  of.  We  are  not  writing  without 
weighing  our  words  carefully  when  we  say  that  there  are 
farms  in  plenty  where  the  slave-owner  demands  as  part  of 
his  serfs'  obligations  the  right  to  every  lass  as  soon  as  she 
enters  on  womanhood,  sometimes  much  before.  He  demands 
it,  and  he  does  what  he  will  with  these  children,  for  they 
are  usually  little  else ;  and  there  is  no  remedy  for  the 
parents. 

Inconceivable  cynicism  is  the  attitude  of  all  Yucatecans 
towards  sexual  excesses.  The  young  sons  of  fourteen  and 
upwards  are  not  restrained  from,  indeed  they  are  often  actually 
encouraged  by  fathers  and  even  mothers  in,  indulging  their 
boyish  passions  at  the  expense  of  the  little  Indian  slave-girls. 
It  is  no  answer  to  say,  as  some  Yucatecans  do,  that  the  girls 
are  in  very  many  cases  more  than  willing  victims  of  their  boy- 
lovers.     Yucatecan   lads    are   notably   handsome,  and   even 


SLAVERY   ON   THE    HACIENDAS  333 

maids  of  the  cold  North  would  find  it  hard  to  withstand  their 
wooing.  It  remains  the  fact  that  these  youthful  Don  Juans 
in  many  cases  do  not  woo  at  all.  They  command ;  and  the 
girl-child  must  go  at  night  to  the  boy's  room  or  be  cruelly 
beaten  by  him  till  she  surrenders.  If  she  plucked  up  courage 
to  complain  to  her  mistress,  she  would  be  simply  laughed  at. 
She  is  but  a  little  slave-girl.  What  better  fate  could  she  ask 
for  herself  than  to  have  thus  early  attracted  the  notice  of  the 
lad  who  will  some  day  be  her  owner  ?  And  if  a  child  results, 
why,  it  is  but  one  more  hacienda  baby,  brought  up  with  the 
rest.  No  one  cares  ;  and  if  it  be  a  girl,  why  then  in  the  full- 
ness of  years  it  wiU  most  probably  attract  the  notice  of  its 
own  father,  who  by  that  time  will  have  inherited  the  estates. 
The  girl  would  not  know,  and  dare  not  disobey  if  she  did  ; 
and  it  is  quite  certain  the  man  by  that  time  would  have  ruined 
so  many  Indian  girls  that  he  would  be  past  any  sensitiveness 
where  his  self-gratifications  were  concerned.  It  is  possible 
that  the  reader  will  by  this  time  be  willing  to  acquit  us  of  any 
unfairness  of  which  we  may  have  seemed  guilty  in  Chapter  IV., 
when  we  divided  the  population  of  so-called  civihsed  Yucatan 
into  "  Savages  "  and  "  Slaves." 

As  a  rule  it  may  be  said  that  the  Yucatecan  is  a  benevolent 
master.  It  pays  him  better  to  be  so,  and  every  Yucatecan's 
one  rule  in  Ufe  is  to  do  what  pays  him.  Indeed  there  is  really 
no  reason  for  him  to  be  harsh.  The  average  Indian  is  as 
submissive  as  a  well-whip j)ed  hound,  creeping  up  after  a 
thrashing  to  kiss  his  master's  hand.  This  Stephens  actually 
witnessed,  and  the  miserable  slaves  are  always  made  to  do  it.^ 
He  seldom  disobeys  :  he  works  uncomplainingly  all  his  life 
for  no  pay  ;  and  he  breeds  pretty  daughters  for  his  lord's 
gratification.  The  Yucatecan  would  indeed  be  hard  to  please 
if  he  quarrelled  with  such  an  exemplary  beast  of  burden.  And 
the  habit  of  submission  learnt  through  centuries  of  tyranny 
has  affected  the  Mayan  women.  They  exhibit  a  complacency 
towards  their  Yucatecan  lovers  which  suggests,  what  alas  ! 
cannot  be  denied,  that  chastity  means  little  to  them  to-day. 
Visiting  a  large  place,  a  little  incident  struck  us  as  very  signifi- 
cant. The  haciendado  was  showing  us  his  kitchens.  Many 
Indian  women  were  busied  at  trays  and  tables  preparing  meal 
and  so  forth.  One  beautiful  girl,  about  eighteen  perhaps, 
was  bending  over   her   task,   and   as   our    host   passed  her 

1  We  saw  the  Indian  women  go  down  on  one  knee  and  kiss  the  hand 
of  the  haciendado  whose  farm  we  were  viewing. 


334  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

he  grasped  her  plump  brown  neck,  squeezing  it  as  one  would 
pet  a  dog.  If  we  lived  a  century  we  should  not  forget  the 
way  that  girl  looked  up  at  him.  It  was  a  mixture  of  animal 
submission  and  feminine  coquetry  which  there  was  no  mis- 
taking. There  was  in  the  girl's  eyes  something  which  told 
volumes,  and  they  were  not  very  pleasant  reading  for  any  men 
who  have  learnt  that  the  love  of  women  is  a  prize  which  should 
be  earned. 

In  truth,  Mayan  morahty  is  very,  very  lax,  and  the  blamen 
lies  on  the  "  Christians  "  who  came  four  centuries  back  to 
Yucatan  to  civilise  and  preach  the  love  of  God  to  the  Indians. 
They  cannot  wriggle  out  of  that  blame  :  they  cannot  shirk 
it.  Even  if  doubt  could  be  entertained  as  to  the  ancient 
Mayan  laws  we  have  quoted  in  Chapter  XIV.  showing  the 
sanctity  attached  by  them  to  chastity,  there  can  be  no  ground 
for  disbelieving  the  Spanish  historians.  They  bear  united 
testimony  to  the  evils  which  resulted  from  the  Conquest. 
They  state  that  the  Mayan  women  dearly  prized  their  chastity, 
but  that  all  high  ideals  were  lost  on  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 
Yes,  the  "  Christians  "  have  changed  all  that.  Who  will  be 
the  thrower  of  the  first  stone  at  the  humble  Indian  lassie  who 
prefers  the  kisses  of  a  lover  to  the  whip  and  starvation  ?  It 
is  all  very  sad,  but  so  natural.  They  have  learnt  their  lesson. 
Their  masters,  their  priests  even,  have  taught  them  not  to 
value  chastity.  What  avails  it  for  them  to  struggle,  even 
if  they  had  the  wit  to  do  so  ? 

From  our  balcony  at  Tizimin  we  watched  one  morning 
played  that  comedy  of  life  which  so  often  turns  to  tragedy. 
An  Indian  girl,  a  beautiful  young  creature  of  about  twelve,  her 
soft  white  huipil  clinging  round  the  dainty  brown  calves,  her 
basket  of  fruit  balanced  on  her  small  black  head,  pattered 
down  the  dusty  road.  There  met  her  a  Yucatecan,  young, 
tall,  with  big  black  moustache  and  fine  eyes  :  just  the  face 
to  win  her  simple  heart.  A  look,  a  glance,  a  giggle.  They 
stopped  to  speak.  By  the  pretty  toss  of  her  head  you  knew 
he  was  pressing  her  to  see  him,  and  she  was  refusing.  But 
she  would,  of  course.  Her  heart,  simple  as  a  bird's,  would 
be  aflutter  till  she  had  given  her  handsome  lover  all,  till  she 
had  run  eager  to  meet  Life  and  its  secrets  half-way.  For  him 
it  was  the  merest  incident.  A  month  or  two  and  she  would 
be  forgotten.     What  did  it  matter  ?     She's  only  an  Indian  ! 

Perhaps  he  is  right :  perhaps  it  does  not  really  matter.  Per- 
haps, as  she  clasps  closer  to  her  brown  breast  the  baby  clinging 


SLAVERY   ON   THE   HACIENDAS  335 

with  greedy  lips  to  her  nipple,  she,  too,  will  think  it  does  not 
matter  :  perhaps  she  will  not  think  at  all.  She  is  a  mother  : 
it  matters  Httle  by  whom.  She  has  done  her  duty  to  God  Who 
willed  her  maker  of  men.  She  has  done  her  duty  to  her  master 
who  bids  her  make  him  slaves.  Perhaps  in  the  black  head, 
bending,  crooning,  over  the  morsel  of  brown  flesh,  there  will  be 
no  feeling,  more  or  less,  than  the  apathetic  mother-love  of 
the  cow  as  it  licks  with  loving  tongue  each  spot  on  its  new- 
bom  calf.  Perhaps,  perhaps  not.  He  would  be  bold  indeed 
who  would  dare  to  say  that  man  has  a  right  to  command  that 
apathy. 

And  so,  after  centuries  of  oppression,  the  race  is  dead, 
a  chattel,  body  and  soul,  of  a  corrupt  and  degraded  people. 
When  the  task  of  revivifying  these  poor  Mayans  with  the 
ehxir  of  freedom  is  undertaken,  if  it  ever  is  (and  pray  God 
it  be),  by  the  United  States  of  America,  it  will  be  as  difficult 
£is  nursing  back  to  convalescence  a  patient  sick  unto  death. 
No  beings  will  at  first  understand  freedom  so  ill.  They  are 
Uke  prisoners  who  have  been  for  weary  years  in  the  darkness 
of  unlighted  dungeons.  The  glare  of  the  sunlight  of  freedom 
will  be  too  dazzling  for  their  poor  atrophied  eyes.  They  will 
shade  them  and  cringe  back  into  the  gloom. 

Well,  on  p.  324  we  left  our  Indians  returning  from  their 
day's  work  as  the  sun  is  sinking.  There  is  Uttle  more  for 
them  to  do.  The  cattle  to  tend,  their  humble  meal  to  eat ; 
and  then  from  the  little  stucco  chapel  rings  out  the  bell  for 
vespers.  The  blue  of  the  heavens  has  changed  to  a  steel, 
fading  on  the  western  horizon  into  the  palest  lemon.  Over 
the  baked  earth  steals  the  cool  breath  of  night :  the  silence 
is  broken  only  by  the  hum  of  some  night-moth,  the  cry  of  an 
owl  in  the  distant  woods,  the  lowing  of  the  cattle  in  the  corral. 
It  is  very  wonderful,  this  first  half-hour  of  the  tropic  night. 
In  the  stillness,  sitting  on  the  broad  stone  verandah,  we  pre- 
sently all  silently  stand  when  the  vesper  bell's  monotonous 
tinkle  stops,  and,  Uke  a  funeral  toll,  nine  solemn  notes  sound 
for  the  Nine  Mysteries.  As  the  echo  of  the  ninth  dies  away, 
the  hacienda  day  is  done.  In  the  darkness  the  white-clothed, 
brown-legged  figures  glide  up,  hat  in  hand,  and  greet  the 
haciendado  and  his  guests  with  "  Buenas  noches  !  "  ("  Good- 
night!")- 

Ah  !  dear  gentle  brown-skinned  folk,  your  night  has  indeed 
come ;  but  it  is  scarcely  good.  Your  heritage  is  another's. 
You  are  his — bodies  and  souls  !     Your  strength  and  muscle 


336  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

axe  given  you  to  enrich  him  :  your  backs  are  his  to  wheal : 
your  sons  and  daughters  are  his  :  all  that  you  have  is  his  to 
give  or  to  take  away.  Truly  has  the  night  come  !  "  Blessed 
are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit  the  earth."  You  are  meek, 
but  you  are  disinherited.  Verily  !  there  is  nothing  sacred  to 
man  :  not  even  the  Beatitudes. 


CHAPTER   XX 

YUCATAN    AS    IT    IS    TO-DAY    AND    THE    YUCATECANS 

THE  Yucatecans  are  a  race  of  parvenus.  They  have 
been  unfortunate  both  by  inheritance  and  fate.  The 
Spanish  have  never  been  successful  colonisers.  History  teaches 
that  they  have  always  suffered  from  "  wind  in  the  head," 
both  socially  and  religiously.  They  are  bigots,  and  they  are 
naturally  bullies.  To  these  racial  faihngs  Fate  has  added  for 
the  Yucatecans  the  last  and  most  fatal  of  gifts,  sudden  wealth. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  the  wealth  of  the  Yucatecans.  Many 
of  them  are  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of  even  their  avarice, 
and  that  is  saying  much.  But  when  to  mushroom  milhonaires 
is  given  the  governance  of  an  enslaved  race,  it  would  be  nothing 
short  of  a  miracle  if  the  very  finest  and  largest  breed  of  parvenus 
was  not  produced.  If  you  think  of  all  the  bad  qualities,  the 
pettinesses  and  meannesses  of  aU  the  parvenus  you  have  ever 
met  or  heard  of,  you  will  have  some  sort  of  mental  picture  of 
a  Yucatecan.  If  there  are  any  unpleasant  characteristics 
of  the  parvenu  you  have  forgotten,  the  typical  Yucatecan 
has  got  those  too. 

Avarice  is  their  besetting  sin.  Money  is  their  god.  There 
is  a  sajdng  that  "  Jews  cannot  live  in  Yucatan."  The  sharpest 
Hebrew  would  come  off  second-best  in  a  business  deal  with 
a  Yucatecan.  This  is  the  characteristic  of  all  ages  and  all 
ranks.  The  Yucatecan  is  always  "  6n  the  make."  It  matters 
not  if  he  is  a  multi-miUionaire.  The  richest  man  in  the  city 
of  Merida  would  not  be  in  the  least  offended  if  you  offered  to 
buy  the  flowers  from  his  patio  or  garden.  He  himself  would 
cut  what  you  wanted  and  drive  a  hard  bargain  with  you. 
In  a  rich  quarter  of  the  capital  a  wealthy  family  make  a  prac- 
tice every  dry  season  of  selling  water  at  ten  centavos  a  pail ! 
A  foreign  resident,  accustomed  to  buy  eggs  from  the  servants 
of  one  of  the  great  land-owning  families  of  Merida,  called  one 
day  and  found  the  housekeeper  out.  The  Uttle  daughter  of 
the  house,  ten  years  old,  and  entitled,  on  coming  of  age,  to 

337  22 


338  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

a  million  dollars  in  her  own  right,  overheard  the  caller  speaking 
to  one  of  the  maids,  and  came  out  to  offer  for  six  centavos 
one  egg  which  her  pet  hen  had  laid.  Three  centavos  is  the 
price  of  an  egg  all  the  year  through  in  Yucatan  ! 

There  are  no  poor  Yucatecans.  Small  wonder  :  for  not 
only  do  they  lose  no  opportunity  of  raking  in  the  shekels, 
but  they  openly  boast  that  they  never  entertain  or  show  hospi- 
tahty,  unless  it  pays  them  to  do  so.  We  can  bear  eloquent 
witness  to  this,  for  from  end  to  end  of  our  tour  never  once 
was  so  much  as  a  cup  of  coffee  offered  us  by  a  Yucatecan, 
with  the  single  exception  of  the  semi-official  breakfast  we 
earlier  described.  At  the  town  of  Tizimin,  where  we  spent 
Christmas,  though  the  Jefe  and  all  the  authorities  of  the  town 
knew  we  were  inhabiting  a  hovel  destitute  of  everything  except 
pegs  in  the  walls  on  which  to  swing  our  hammocks,  not  a  soul 
in  that  town  of  several  hundreds  of  well-to-do  people  was 
found  to  come  forward  with  the  offer  of  a  chair  or  a  table, 
a  basin  to  wash  in,  or  the  loan  of  a  little  kitchen  crockery. 
No,  if  we  needed  such  things  we  must  buy  them  ;  and  if  we 
did  not  wish  to  do  that,  why  then  we  must  go  without.  We 
had  gone  to  Yucatan  intent  on  roughing  it,  and  we  did  not 
mind  dining  with  one  of  our  baggage  boxes  for  table,  squatting 
Turk-fashion  on  the  stone  floor.  We  only  mention  it  as  typical 
of  Yucatecan  inhospitahty,  which  really  passes  all  under- 
standing. 

But  rich  as  the  richest  Yucatecans  are,  it  is  curious  to 
see  how  little  they  know  how  to  spend  their  money.  A  dozen 
shoddy  rocking-chairs,  a  roll-top  desk,  a  few  Oriental  rugs 
or  mats,  some  painfully  modern  china,  and  the  walls  adorned  (!) 
with  a  half-dozen  hideous  oleographs  :  there  you  have  the 
typical  room  of  the  typical  rich  Yucatecan.  They  feel  this 
lack  of  intelligence  in  using  their  enormous  wealth,  and  it 
leads  them  into  all  kinds  of  bizarre  extravagances.  They 
can  spend  money  when  they  like  and  when  it  adds,  or  they 
think  it  adds,  to  their  comfort.  One  henequen  lord  went  a 
few  years  ago  to  the  St.  Louis  Exhibition.  He  hired  a  special 
steamship,  and,  on  reaching  New  Orleans,  ordered  a  special 
train,  making  the  condition  that  it  was  to  travel  never  quicker 
than  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  and  must  stop  at  sunset,  no  matter 
how  inconvenient  this  proved  to  the  railway  officials.  This 
precious  train  cost  him  six  hundred  pounds  ;  and  his  whole 
trip  of  thirty  days  cost  sixty  thousand  dollars,  or  six  thousand 
pounds. 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  339 

As  a  people  the  Yucatecans  are  illiterate  to  a  degree  which 
is  almost  inconceivable.  With  wealth  untold,  they  care 
nothing  for  books  or  learning.  A  man  worth  three  milhons 
sterling  confessed  to  us  that  there  was  not  a  book  in  his  house, 
and  that  he  never  read  a  paper.  And  he  was  certainly  one 
of  the  most  intelligent  men  in  the  country,  and  a  man,  too, 
who  had  travelled  extensively  in  Europe.  But  if  the  men 
are  supremely  ignorant  of  everything  except  money-making, 
and  uninterested  in  aught  but  the  gross  sensuality  which  is 
the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  their  worthless  lives,  the  women 
are  worse.  It  is  really  not  their  fault ;  for  they  are  httle 
better,  if  at  all,  than  odalisques,  leading  in  youth  the  lives 
of  toys  ;  in  age  spending  their  days  in  over-eating  and  over- 
sleeping. Of  their  colossal  ignorance  of  facts  within  the  know- 
ledge of  every  National  School  child,  the  following  is  an  amusing 
example.  A  young  Yucatecan  lady,  daughter  of  one  of  the 
richest  of  the  families  in  the  State,  was  sent  to  New  York  for 
a  trip  for  her  health,  and  she  was  to  go  on  to  England.  She 
suffered  so  much  from  seasickness  on  the  voyage  out  that 
the  doctors  in  America  said  that  she  must  not  undertake  the 
longer  voyage  to  England,  but  must  return  at  once  to  Yucatan. 
Her  married  sister  in  Merida,  talking  of  her  return,  said  she 
would  come  back  by  land.  The  family  are  so  enormously 
rich  that  it  was  quite  possible  for  them  to  contemplate  the 
great  cost  of  the  overland  trip  ;  but  it  was  pointed  out  to  the 
seiiora  that  the  invahd  would  have  many  weeks  of  travel, 
and  would  have  to  make  a  very  wide  detour  south,  to  avoid 
the  swamps  of  Chiapas.  "  Oh  no  "  sweetly  repUed  the  million- 
airess, "  she  is  to  come  by  dihgence  via  Havana  !  " 

The  illiteracy  of  the  wealthier  classes  is  reproduced  in  a 
grosser  form  among  the  ordinary  Yucatecans.  They  have 
no  thoughts  beyond  their  food,  their  women,  and  their  drinks. 
But  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  dolce  far  niente  view  of 
hfe,  and  one  could  easily  forgive  this  race  of  sybarites  if  they 
were  otherwise  agreeable.  Really  it  sounds  like  an  exaggera- 
tion, but  the  Yucatecans  seemed  to  us  the  most  disagreeable 
folk  in  the  world.  They  are  avaricious  to  the  degree  of  dis- 
honesty. They  will  not  actually  steal,  but  they  will  cheat 
you  every  time  and  chortle  over  it.  Quite  a  big  man,  a  Jefe, 
who  also  kept  a  shop  in  one  town  we  visited,  again  and  again 
tried  to  cheat  us  out  of  odd  centavos  over  some  trifling  pur- 
chase. It  was  incredible,  but  it  was  dehberate.  They  are 
entirely  untrustworthy  in  business  :   they  will  give  their  word 


340  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

and  break  it  without  scruple  if  it  suits  their  interests.  A 
practical  example  of  this  came  to  our  notice  in  the  islands, 
where  there  is  a  good  deal  of  trade  with  American  ports  such 
as  Key  West.  An  American  skipper  told  us  that  he  had,  at 
the  moment  of  speaking,  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty 
pairs  of  women's  shoes  on  his  hands,  through  the  impertinent 
shuffling  of  his  customers.  They  would  ask  him  to  bring  them 
shoes  from  the  States,  give  the  number,  and  then  if  the  shoes 
did  not  quite  look  what  they  thought  they  wanted,  they  said 
"  No  quiet  0  "  ("I  do  not  want  "),  and  the  poor  trader,  having 
paid  cash  for  the  footgear,  was  "  landed." 

No  Yucatecan  will  pay  a  debt  unless  you  dun  him  ad 
nauseam.  It  is  always  "  manana"  (to-morrow),  and,  as  the 
stranger  in  Yucatan  learns  to  know  only  too  well,  maiiana 
never  comes.  If  a  Yucatecan  owes  you  five  dollars,  he  will 
pay  you  three.  For  themselves,  they  are  the  most  remorseless 
dunners.  If  you  have  the  misfortune  to  owe  a  few  dollars, 
for,  say,  the  hire  of  a  volan,  you  will  have  the  wretch  literally 
before  dawn  at  your  door,  beating  at  it  and  demanding  the 
money,  though  he  well  knows  you  are  stopping  some  days. 
It  is  not  so  much  the  demanding  of  the  money,  which  is,  after 
all,  their  right,  as  it  is  the  grossly  uncivil  way  they  do  it.  We 
found  this  to  be  the  experience  of  all  foreigners  resident  in 
the  country,  so  we  were  forced  to  acquit  ourselves  of  having 
any  especially  dishonest  look.  An  American  told  us  that, 
owing  a  trifling  sum  to  a  wealthy  woman,  the  latter  came  to 
the  hotel  and  demanded  the  money  with  an  insolence  which 
was  almost  intolerable. 

Our  friend  the  American  skipper,  who  had  traded  with 
the  islands  for  more  than  ten  years,  told  us  that  the  insolence 
of  the  people  in  matters  of  trade  was  extreme.  Knowing 
him  to  have  boots  or  shirts  to  sell,  they  would  call  from  their 
doors,  "  Capitan,  yo  quiero"  ("I  want"),  whatever  it  was. 
"  Damn  'em,"  said  the  little  man,  "  let  'em  come  up  to  my 
store  and  choose.  No,  they  want  me  to  fag  things  to  their 
doors,  literally  put  the  boots  on  their  feet."  Another 
peculiarity  of  the  people  is  that  they  do  not  recognise  a 
difference  of  goods.  They  think  the  cheapest  shoe  or  cloth 
should  be  the  standard  for  all  goods. 

The  Yucatecan  women  are,  there  is  no  denying  it,  very 
often  extremely  lovely.  It  is  just  that  beauty  which  one 
instinctively  associates  with  a  people  who  have  brought  sexual 
relations  to  a  fine  art  of  absolute  self-indulgence.     By  one 


YUCATAN    AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  341 

of  the  only  three  Englishmen  in  the  country  we  were  told 
that  the  state  of  morality  among  the  Yucatecans  themselves, 
quite  apart  from  the  very  sad  side  of  the  slavery  question  to 
which  we  have  referred  in  the  last  chapter,  beggars  description. 
We  can  well  believe  it. 

Marriages  are  contracted  at  very  early  ages,  sometimes 
the  bride's  and  groom's  years  totalling  a  good  deal  under 
thirty.  Among  the  wealthier  Yucatecans  marriages  are 
nearly  always  de  convenance,  and  are  arranged  by  the  two 
families  :  the  boy  seldom,  the  girl  never,  having  a  say  in  the 
matter.  Thereafter  the  child-wife  passes  into  a  quasi-seraglio 
type  of  Ufe.  There  are  never  any  men  visitors  to  the  house, 
and  such  things  as  wholesome  exercise  are  rigorously  taboo 
to  all  upper-class  Yucatecan  matrons.  If  the  doctor  orders 
exercise,  the  miserable  httle  animated  toy  of  the  Yucatecan 
Croesus  drives  some  miles  out  of  the  city,  and  then  stops  her 
carriage  and  solemnly  walks  up  and  down  the  dusty  roadway 
for  the  allotted  time.  No  Yucatecan  woman  of  position  must 
ever  walk  in  public  :  that  would  be  a  social  faux  pas  far  more 
serious  than  to  have  a  child  before  marriage.  The  exalted 
women  of  Merida  very  rarely  leave  their  homes  till  dark, 
when  they  drive  round  the  plaza.  Occasionally  they  go 
shopping,  when  they  remain  in  their  carriages,  and  the  goods 
are  brought  out  to  them  by  obsequious  shopmen.  The  Ufe 
they  lead  is  of  the  most  empty  and  vapid  nature.  Surrounded 
by  dozens  of  Indian  servants,  they  loll  all  the  day  in  their 
hammocks,  Hstening  to  such  gossip  as  their  women  friends 
or  their  servants  can  tell  them.  A  curious  result  of  this  harem 
life  they  lead  is  the  roaring  trade  done  by  Turkish  pedlars 
who  travel  all  over  Yucatan.  Hours  are  spent  by  the  rich 
women  examining  their  rolls  of  cloths  and  finery.  Once  a 
year  the  Paris  milliners  and  modistes  visit  Merida  and  take 
the  orders  of  the  richer  wives. 

The  women  accept  their  lot  in  life  very  philosophically.  It 
cannot  be  said  of  them,  as  Canning  said  of  the  Dutch  traders, 
and  as  might  only  too  truly  be  said  of  many  English  and 
American  women,  that  "  in  matters  of  commerce  the  fault  of 
the  Dutch  is  giving  too  little  and  asking  too  much."  They  ask 
very  little  but  the  amorous  attentions  of  their  lords  and  masters, 
as  long  as  their  looks  last ;  when  they  see  themselves  replaced 
with  really  complete  apathy  in  those  special  functions.  Not 
that  even  in  their  bridal  years  they  have  not  already  been 
well  broken-in  by  a  running  fire  of  infidelities  on  the  part  of 


342  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

their  menfolk.  But  they  have  long  been  used  to  that,  when 
as  children  they  have  seen  the  fate  of  their  little  Indian  girl 
playmates.  Of  the  Yucatecan  woman  one  might  say  only 
too  truly,  quoting  the  reported  saying  of  the  Empress  Eugenie 
when  her  rather  erratic  Emperor  brought  up  to  introduce 
a  countess,  who  was  notorious  as  a  royal  mistress,  and  who 
on  this  particular  evening  appeared  as  "  Queen  of  Hearts  " 
with  a  large  gold  heart  swinging  some  way  below  her  corsage, 
"  Madame,  vous  portez  voire  cceur  trh  has."  She  does,  but 
she  really  is  not  to  blame.  She  has  been  taught  nothing 
better. 

The  Suffragette  question  has  not  yet  invaded  Yucatan, 
and  lovely  woman  is  content  with  the  life  of  a  lapdog.  As 
well  ask  the  Dudus  and  Haidees  of  a  Turkish  pasha's  harem 
to  rebel  as  these  charming  senoras,  swinging  in  their  ham- 
mocks and  puffing  at  their  cigarettes.  As  for  housekeeping, 
they  are  contemptible  in  their  uselessness.  An  American 
lady  very  kindly  volunteered  one  day  to  show  a  Yucatecan 
lady  how  to  make  a  cake  to  which  she  had  taken  a  great  fancy. 
While  our  friend  was  busy  mixing  the  ingredients,  she  quite 
naturally  said,  "  While  I'm  doing  this,  you  beat  up  the  eggs." 
A  look  of  absolute  horror  came  over  the  woman's  face.  "  Beat 
up  eggs  !  Oh  !  I  could  not  possibly  do  that.  One  of  my 
Indian  girls  can  do  that  for  you."  But  as  we  have  said,  they 
fill  the  role  of  pretty  toys  to  perfection  ;  and  they  later  prove 
excellent  mothers.  They  are  great  breeders,  these  Yucatecans, 
and  family  life  is  of  the  closest,  the  big  mansions  of  Merida 
often  housing  four  generations.  Curiously  enough,  despite 
the  tropical  climate,  the  Yucatecan  woman  retains  her  looks 
quite  late  into  life  very  often.  Our  hostess  at  the  breakfast 
was  the  mother  of  seven  children,  the  eldest  a  girl  of  eleven, 
as  tall  as  herself,  and  yet  she  certainly  did  not  look  more  than 
twenty-two  or  three,  and  so  girlish  that  it  was  difficult  to 
beheve  she  was  a  mother  at  all.  But  a  far  more  remarkable 
case  was  that  of  a  woman  who  was  but  forty-six  and  had  had 
twenty-four  sons  !  We  did  not  see  this  latter-day  Hecuba, 
but  we  were  told  that  she  was  still  quite  comely. 

There  is  very  little  rebellion  among  Yucatecan  women 
at  their  fate,  and  we  certainly  heard  nothing  at  all  of  divorce. 
We  do  not  think  it  exists  as  an  institution,  though  it  is  possible 
that  in  this,  as  in  all  else,  the  men  have  their  own  way  and, 
if  they  want  to,  can  get  rid  of  their  wives.  Among  the  less 
wealthy  families,  the  marriages  are  less  formal  in  their  makings 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  343 

and  the  wives  do  more  work  :  that  is  really  the  only  difference. 
Re-marriage  among  the  men  is  the  rule.  Most  of  the  elder 
men  appear  to  have  been  married  at  least  three  times,  which 
rather  suggests  that  the  average  life  for  males  is  longer  than 
for  females.  This  is  possibly  so.  The  Yucatecans  certainly 
look  a  healthy  people,  though  the  superfluous  fat  which  is 
noticeable  even  in  the  boys  and  girls  scarcely  suggests  real 
constitutional  strength.  What  surprised  us  greatly  was  the 
terrible  prevalence  of  leprosy  among  the  richest  classes.  It 
is  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  you  could  scarcely  find  a 
wealthy  family  without  this  ghastly  taint ;  and  some  of  the 
greatest  land-owners  and  their  children  are  eaten  up  with  it. 
No  steps  appear  to  be  taken  to  isolate  the  cases,  and  just  before 
our  arrival  in  the  country  a  young  leper,  enormously  rich, 
had  contracted  a  marriage  with  a  lovely  girl,  though  he  was 
then  in  a  moribund  condition.  He  had  died  a  few  months 
after  his  wedding,  and  while  we  were  in  Merida  the  bride  died 
of  the  loathsome  disease.  It  is  said  to  have  been  brought 
from  Spain  in  the  earliest  days  of  the  Conquest,  and  it  has 
remained  curiously  restricted  to  the  richer  classes.  You  see 
little  or  nothing  of  it  among  the  lowlier  Yucatecans,  and  it 
appears  unknown  among  the  Indians,  who,  as  a  rule,  are 
wonderfully  free  of  all  skin  troubles.  The  lepers  or  those 
threatened  with  the  terrible  curse  were  some  of  them  men 
of  advanced  years,  and  their  general  health  did  not  appear 
in  any  way  affected.  One  old  fellow  had  but  just  lost  two 
brothers  from  it,  but  he  himself  had  so  far  escaped,  though 
his  children  certainly  looked  tainted.  Like  insanity,  it  often 
skips  a  generation.  It  was  curious  to  see  these  sybaritical 
plutocrats,  eager  of  life's  "  ecstasy's  utmost  to  clutch  at  the 
core,"  living  their  apolaustic  days  out,  haunted  by  this 
terrible  shadow. 

The  Church  !  What  can  we  say  about  the  Church  in  Yu- 
catan ?  Does  the  reader  remember  those  spittoons  in  Merida 
Cathedral  which  we  mentioned  in  an  earUer  chapter  ?  Well, 
those  ugly  etceteras  of  an  ugly  habit  are  a  fitting  commentary 
upon  the  Church.  It  was  in  1867  that  President  Benito  Juarez 
disestabhshed  the  Church  throughout  the  whole  of  the  Republic 
of  Mexico.  The  effect  has  been  simply  disastrous  as  far  as 
Yucatan  is  concerned.  Her  Church  is  so  discreditable  that 
the  Pope  would  be  really  only  consulting  the  best  interests  of 
Catholicism  if  he  abolished  the  priests  altogether.  As  there 
is  no  State  provision,  the  padres  must  "  hold  their  private 


344  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

dripping-pans  to  catch  the  public  grease  "  ;  and  right  skilfully 
they  do  this.  A  set  of  diriiy  unwashed  rogues,  men  whose 
faces  are  enough  to  hang  them,  men  whom  no  father  would 
trust  with  his  girl  or  boy  the  other  side  of  a  glass  door, 
they  are  most  of  them  "  carpet-baggers,"  wastrels  from  Spain, 
many  expelled  for  very  excellent  reasons  from  their  colleges, 
who  come  into  Yucatan  to  find  a  living.  Even  the  amiable 
Stephens,  who  looked  at  everything  Yucatecan,  except  the 
garrapatas,  through  rose-tinted  glasses,  is  obliged  to  confess 
that  their  morals  were  loose.  But  that  was  a  long  time  ago. 
They  are  much  looser  now.  The  last  incumbent  of  Tizimin 
was  drunk  every  day,  and  kept  twelve  Indian  girls  in  the 
parsonage.  Even  the  Tiziminites  rebelled  at  last,  and  this 
clerical  Brigham  Young  had  to  go. 

His  place  had  been  taken  at  the  time  of  our  arrival  by  a 
priest  who  had,  it  was  said,  means  of  his  own,  and  had  come 
from  Spain  especially  to  feed  the  "  hungry  sheep  "  of  the 
poky  little  Yucatecan  town.  He  was  a  little  ratty  man  with 
a  face  suggestive  of  previous  incarnations  as  a  ferret  and  a 
money-lender.  A  blood-sucking,  lecherous  little  thief :  that  is 
what  the  man  looked,  and  we  have  good  reason  to  believe  we 
have  done  him  no  great  injustice  in  this  description.  He  was 
the  hero  of  the  "  comer  in  candles  "  to  which  we  referred  in 
the  chapter  dealing  with  Tizimin.  We  had  called  in  at  the 
tienda  to  buy  a  candle  by  the  light  of  which  to  eat  our  humble 
supper,  but  the  storekeeper  told  us  he  had  not  got  a  candle 
left.  To  our  astonishment  he  said  that  the  padre  had  bought 
up  every  candle  in  the  place  :  that,  as  it  was  fiesta  week, 
all  the  Indians  would  buy  candles  to  bum  before  the  images 
of  the  Virgin  and  the  saints  ;  and  that  the  wily  curer  of  souls 
had,  in  short,  made  a  corner  in  dips.  The  shopkeeper  jubi- 
lantly announced  that  he  himself  had  made  a  profit  out  of 
the  deal  of  one  hundred  doUars,  but  that  the  priest  would 
make  at  least  three  thousand  dollars  or  three  hundred  pounds, 
enough  for  him  to  live  on  very  comfortably  for  the  rest  of 
the  year.    There  is  evidently  a  great  deal  in  candles  in  Yucatan. 

The  tienda-keeper  assured  us  that  the  padre  was  a  good 
man  ;  but  we  had  our  doubts  on  this  point.  This  cunning 
vicegerent  of  God  had  a  young  priest  to  help  him  in  the  duties, 
to  whom  he  paid  the  handsome  salary  of  a  shilling  a  day,  of 
course  providing  him  with  food  and  lodging.  We  saw  the 
lad  daily  sitting  at  the  window  of  the  rectory,  and  it  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  saturnine,  sensual  face.    The 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS    TO-DAY  345 

relations  of  these  men  to  the  girls  and  women  are  those  of 
privileged  lovers.  They  are  in  truth  hcensed  libertines,  whose 
"  benefit  of  clergy  "  covers  a  multitude  of  sins  venial  and 
otherwise.  It  did  not  need  great  acumen  to  guess  at  some 
of  these  latter.  Six  priests  were  recently  deported  from 
Merida  on  the  gravest  charges  :  no  prosecution  being  con- 
templated because  one  of  the  boys  was  the  son  of  a  very 
prominent  official. 

The  priests,  who  are  not  allowed  to  wear  clerical  attire 
in  the  streets,  are  on  the  best  terms  with  the  haciendados, 
and  do  their  utmost,  by  trading  on  the  superstition  of  the 
unfortunate  Indians,  to  keep  slavery  in  being.  There  is  no 
appeal  for  the  hacienda  slave  from  the  action  of  master  backed 
up  by  a  priest.  Friendly  with  the  local  slave-owner,  the 
padre  can,  and  does,  seduce  what  girls  he  pleases.  It  is  most 
unlikely  that  the  bishop  would  hear  of  it.  The  priests  must 
look  for  monetary  support  from  the  land-owners,  so  they  are 
cheek  by  jowl  with  them  all  the  time.  In  the  train  one  day 
we  saw  a  band  of  young  haciendados  elaborately  mocking 
the  intoning  of  the  Mass,  while  a  priest  who  was  with  them 
was  holding  his  sides  with  delighted  laughter.  All  the  Yu- 
catecans  will  gladly  join  in  a  jest  at  the  expense  of  Mother 
Church.  One  night  at  a  show  in  Merida  where  some  very 
questionable  cinematograph  views  were  delighting  the  worthy 
townfolk  and  their  children,  the  loudest  guffaws  and  shrieks 
of  joy  were  evoked  by  a  view  of  a  church  in  the  course 
of  repainting  and  cleaning.  You  first  saw  the  worthy  padre 
directing  the  workmen.  Then  the  painter  leaves  a  pot  of 
black  paint  on  the  pedestal  of  a  statue  of  the  Virgin.  Enter 
on  the  scene  two  ladies.  They  approach  the  image,  reverently 
cross  themselves,  and,  mistaking  the  paint  for  a  piscina,  dip 
their  fingers  in  what  they  think  holy  water,  crossing  their 
foreheads  and  then  their  faces.  The  fun  comes  in  when  they 
catch  sight  of  each  other.  This  mockery  simply  enchanted 
the  Catholic  audience. 

Talking  of  piscinas,  at  the  south  door  of  the  Tizimin  church 
was  one.  In  it  was  a  chipped  enamel  bowl,  half  full  of  water 
with  a  suspicious  sediment.  We  just  touched  the  edge  of 
the  cup,  and  the  sediment  began  to  move  about  "  on  its  own." 
The  water  was  alive  with  myriads  of  small  worms  and  magotty 
creatures  !  The  man  who  had  faith  enough  to  beheve  that 
the  touching  of  his  forehead  with  that  stinking  compound 
was  a  short  cut  to  salvation  deserves  his  faith.    There  was 


546  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

another  of  these  tadpole  basins  in  the  church  at  Izamal ;  and 
judging  from  reports  that  reached  us,  holy  water  with  some 
"  body  "  in  it  seemed  quite  the  fashion  in  the  Yucatecan 
churches.  Agua  Sagrada  indeed  !  Agua  podrida  would  cer- 
tainly be  a  better  name. 

The  spittoons  in  the  cathedral  at  Merida  had  replicas, 
we  found,  in  most  of  the  churches.  But  the  palm  must  surely 
be  awarded  to  a  "  Don't  Spit  "  notice  which  we  saw  on  an 
altar  in  one  church.  That  the  notice  was  there  was  no  mere 
accident  either,  for  we  saw  it  in  December,  and  when  we 
returned  through  the  town  in  the  spring  it  was  still  there. 
Evidently  that  was  the  permanent  position  of  this  offensive 
decoration. 

But  at  least  the  clergy  can  plead  a  very  real  necessity  for 
the  spittoons  and  such  notices.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  subject, 
but  any  one  who  wrote  of  the  Yucatecans  without  mentioning 
the  absolutely  universal  habit  would  be  a  faulty  chronicler. 
At  all  times,  everywhere,  everybody,  young  and  old,  of  both 
sexes,  expectorate.  They  have  not  the  excuse  of  smoking, 
for  the  children  and  young  girls  are  as  guilty  of  this  horrible 
and  unhealthy  habit  as  their  elders.  The  prevalence  of  the 
practice  was  so  marked  that  we  asked  several  Yucatecans 
to  explain  what  seemed  both  climatically  and  physically  in- 
explicable. They  pleaded  guilty  to  what  really  amounted 
to  a  racial  custom,  but  they  could  not  explain  it.  While  we 
were  being  taken  round  the  Museum  of  Merida,  the  eleven- 
year-old  son  of  the  curator  spat  the  whole  time  on  the  floor. 
One  day  in  the  islands  a  baker-boy  of  about  twelve  came  to 
our  hut  to  sell  us  cakes.  While  we  were  looking  in  his  basket, 
he  spat  on  the  floor  by  our  hammock-side.  He  seemed  abso- 
lutely amazed  when  we  reproved  him  for  it.  Quite  a  gentle- 
manly ranchero  who  walked  some  miles  with  us  one  gloriously 
sunny  day  in  Cozumel  hawked  and  spat,  not  once  or  twice, 
but  literally  every  half-minute  till  we  wondered  how  his  poor 
rasped  throat  stood  the  strain  hour  after  hour.  The  queer 
thing  was  that  the  habit  was  not  prevalent  among  the  Indians. 
It  seemed  to  be  essentially  a  Yucatecan  vice  :  it  really  amounted 
to  that.  ^  j 

But  to  return  to  the  Church.  At  the  risk  of  appearing 
prejudiced,  we  must  say  that  the  Catholicism  of  the  country 
is  so  decadent  that  its  disgraceful  services  would  be  best 
done  without.  The  drunken  priest  at  Campeachy,  with  an 
unlighted  cigarette  in  his  hand,  seated  in  a  chair  at  the  altar, 


YUCATAN   AS    IT    IS   TO-DAY  347 

his  legs  stuck  up  on  the  chancel  rails,  trying  to  take  part  in 
the  intoning  of  Mass  is  not  the  exception  he  should  be.  Good 
padres  there  must  be,  men  who  would  still  deserve  the  high 
encomiums  that  Stephens  found  it  possible  to  write  of  the 
Yucatecan  clergy  of  his  day.  We  saw  nothing  of  them.  We 
saw  the  prostitution  of  a  great  ecclesiastical  institution,  which, 
with  all  its  terribly  bloody  history,  its  soul-choking  bigotry, 
has  yet  numbered  among  its  servants  some  of  the  noblest  men 
who  have  ever  lived.  We  saw  Catholicism  at  its  worst,  and 
its  worst  is  very  bad  indeed.  Nobody,  not  the  veriest  Non- 
conformist, could  surely  speak  without  reverence  and  admira- 
tion of  the  noble  old  man  who  to-day  rules  over  the  Church 
of  Rome.  He,  assuredly,  would  be  the  first  to  grieve  over 
the  decadence  of  his  creed  in  this  far-off  comer  of  the  Catholic 
world,  as  there  can  be  no  doubt  he  sorrows  at  the  bloody  past 
of  a  religion  which  has  ever  lived,  and  must  ever  live,  on  the 
ignorance — invincible  in  the  case  of  the  better  educated — 
of  its  followers. 

If  graver  charges  lacked  against  Catholicism,  there  would 
always  be  the  indelible  blot  on  its  teachings  that  they  tend  in- 
evitably to  encourage  indifference  and  callousness,  if  not  actually 
cruelty,  towards  the  animal  world.  Everybody  who  has  had 
the  misfortune  to  visit  the  market  of  a  French  town,  such  as 
Dieppe  or  Havre,  or  has  driven  behind  a  Neapolitan  cabman, 
knows  more  than  he  or  she  wishes  of  Latin  cruelty.  It  is  not 
really  that  they  desire  to  inflict  pain  for  the  mere  delight  of 
inflicting  it,  though  there  are  some  fiends  enough  for  that.  No, 
their  creed  and  whole  upbringing  rob  them  of  that  lively 
sympathy  with  God's  creatures  which  He,  but  surely  not  for 
tyranny,  has  placed  in  our  power. 

This  Catholic  characteristic  is  very  marked  in  Yucatan. 
The  pleasantest  Yucatecan  families  we  met  on  our  wander- 
ings were  living  happily  amid  the  victims  of  such  cruelty  as 
would  keep  an  Englishman,  if  he  were  capable  of  it,  awake 
at  nights.  These  were  the  dogs.  Every  Yucatecan  keeps — 
it  is  really  absolutely  euphemistic  to  use  the  word — not  one 
or  two,  but  a  whole  pack  of  assorted  terriers  and  hunting 
dogs ;  but  he  never  bothers  to  feed  them.  It  is  really  a 
heartbreaking  sight  for  a  lover  of  animals  to  go  into  one  of 
the  huts  or  ranches  and  see  the  poor  things.  They  hang 
roimd  the  doorways,  sometimes  so  thin  and  weak  that  they 
cannot  stand  up.  Some  poor  halfbreed  collie  will  raise  its 
weary  head  to  your  knee-level  and  stare  piteously  up  at  you 


348  THE    AMERICAN   EGYPT 

with  eyes  which  are  really  hollow  from  starvation.  In  one 
ranch  we  counted  a  dozen  of  all  sizes  and  ages  and  every  one 
of  them  was  a  disgrace  to  their  owner,  who,  as  it  happened, 
was  quite  a  good  fellow  in  other  ways.  No,  he  could  not  see 
why  he  should  feed  the  dogs.  They  went  out  hunting  with 
him,  those  at  least  that  were  not  too  weak,  and  then  they  got 
a  square  meal  of  peccary-guts  or  other  offal.  But  the  man 
could  not  see  that  the  gaunt  staring-eyed  creatures,  their 
ribs  almost  seeming  to  be  on  the  point  of  piercing  through 
their  coats,  their  bellies  one  sorry  flap  of  fur,  were  a  real  dis- 
grace to  him  and  his  children.  Wherever  you  go  in  Yucatan 
you  see  these  spectres  of  dogs  :  they  are  really  nothing  else. 
As  a  witty  fellow-traveller  put  it,  they  have  to  lean  against 
a  fence  to  bark  and  have  to  stand  a  long  while  to  make  a 
shadow. 

This  indifference  towards  animals  is  general  among 
Yucatecans.  There  is  no  one  to  raise  a  protest  against  the 
barbarously  cruel  practice  they  have  of  plucking  live  fowls. 
The  miserable  birds,  with  their  skins  still  bleeding,  are  hawked 
round  the  streets,  carried  always  by  their  legs.  It  is  enough 
to  make  any  one  sick.  Brought  up  amid  such  callousness,  it 
is  not  at  all  surprising  that  the  children  are  usually  brutal  to 
every  creature  they  have  no  reason  to  fear.  On  one  of  the 
islands  we  saw  a  very  characteristic  incident.  We  were  on  a 
pier,  waiting  for  a  boat.  Three  boys  were  fishing,  the  eldest 
perhaps  thirteen.  One  of  the  smaller  boys  caught  a  fish. 
The  eldest  seized  it  from  him,  and,  producing  a  knife,  stuck 
the  blade  through  the  gills,  thus  pinning  the  struggling  fish 
to  the  boards  of  the  jetty.  Two  or  three  times  he  stabbed 
the  fish,  each  time  exclaiming  "  More,  more,  more"  {"  Die,  die, 
die  ").  When  the  poor  little  creature  had  ceased  to  flutter  its 
tail,  the  lad  deliberately  wiped  the  bloodstained  knife  on 
the  bare  brown  calf  of  his  smaller  boy  companion,  who  was 
lying  on  his  stomach  with  his  head  over  the  jetty  side.  It  was 
not  so  much  the  killing  of  the  fish  which  struck  us,  though 
that  was  cruel  enough,  as  the  extraordinary  exclamation. 
An  English  or  American  boy  could  have  killed  the  fish  just  as 
cruelly  ;  but  neither  of  them  would  have  been  capable  of 
that  ferocious  exhortation.  Nothing  could  have  exceeded 
the  savage  joy  in  the  power  to  kill  which  was  expressed  in 
the  tone  of  the  lad's  voice  as  he  uttered  those  three  words. 

Inquiring  at  a  hut  one  day  for  a  fowl,  we  were  taken  by 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  349 

a  positive  fairy  of  a  little  girl,  perhaps  nine,  to  the  yard  where, 
"  regardless  of  their  fate,"  the  poultry  were  picking  about. 
Our  golden-haired  guide  (she  was  a  beautiful  specimen  of  the 
fair  Latin)  seized  a  dainty  white  hen  and,  swinging  her  by  the 
legs,  invited  us  to  kill  her  there  and  then.  It  was  really  too 
much  for  our  sensitiveness,  and  we  bolted,  only,  half-way  down 
the  village,  to  hear  some  one  running  after  us.  Our  fairy's 
do-a-deal-at-any-cost  Yucatecan  blood  was  up,  and,  thinking 
our  sudden  exit  was  due  to  a  dissatisfaction  with  the  price 
asked,  she  had  brought  after  us  another  bird  which  she  said 
could  be  sold  cheaper.  It  was  a  perky  Uttle  cockerel,  and  as 
it  sat  in  what  should  have  been  those  tender  child's  arms,  and 
looked  up  at  us  with  its  bright  beady  eyes,  we  really  felt  so 
ashamed  that  we  could  not  look  it  in  the  face.  To  have 
ordered  its  death  would  have  been  an  impossibility,  however 
ravenous  we  had  been.  We  stroked  its  head  and  begged  its 
untender  little  mistress  to  let  it  live  a  while  longer. 

But  all  this  is  due  to  a  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  animal 
world.  Unfortunately  dehberate  cruelty  is  also  very  common. 
A  people  who  could  find  fun  in  watching  pain  deserve  the  name 
of  savages.  In  Merida  you  can  see  a  brute  throw  a  poisoned 
crust  of  bread  to  a  stray  dog,  and  then  be  joined  by  a  crowd 
of  folks  who  form  a  laughing  circle  round  the  dying  animal 
to  gloat  over  its  agonised  writhings. 

This  terrible  cruelty  is  a  sad  heritage  of  all  Yucatecans. 
The  Spaniard  is  naturally  cruel,  and  there  is  no  kind  of  doubt 
that  the  Mayans,  hke  all  the  Indian  races  of  the  Americas, 
are  so  too.  Thus  the  Yucatecans  inherit  this  detestable 
trait  from  both  their  parents.  One  has  to  be  very  sharp  with 
one's  Indian  servants  to  prevent  cruelty.  Stephens  relates 
how  his  men  found  an  iguana  in  one  of  the  ruins  in  a  crevice. 
They  pulled  until  the  tail  came  off.  "  They  then  untied  the 
ropes  of  their  sandals,"  writes  Stephens,  "  and  fastening  them 
above  the  hind  legs,  and  pulUng  till  the  long  body  seemed 
parting  like  the  tail,  they  at  length  pulled  him  out.  They 
secured  him  by  a  gripe  under  the  fore  part  of  the  body,  cracked 
his  spine,  and  broke  the  bones  of  his  legs  so  that  he  could  not 
run ;  prised  his  jaws  open,  fastening  them  apart  with  a  sharp 
stick  so  that  he  could  not  bite,  and  then  put  him  away  in  the 
shade.  This  refined  cruelty  was  to  avoid  the  necessity  of 
killing  him  immediately,  for  if  killed,  in  that  hot  chmate  he 
would  soon  be  unfit  for  food ;  but  mutilated  and  mangled  as 
he  was,  he  could  be  kept  alive  till  night."     The  distinguished 


350  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

American  does  not  tell  us  how  it  was  that  he  was  content  to 
witness  "  this  refined  cruelty "  without  apparently  making 
an  attempt  to  stop  such  hellish  torturing.  The  Indians  will 
do  the  same  to-day  :  once  or  twice  our  men  caught  these 
poor  reptiles,  which  they  regard  as  a  great  delicacy  ;  but  we 
always  insisted  on  their  being  killed  outright. 

Every  village  has  its  tienda  or  store  where  you  buy  the 
eternal  black  beans,  peppers,  rice,  tortillas,  and  where  usually 
an  assortment  of  tinned  American  meats  and  fruits  can  be 
purchased  by  those  tired  of  life.  But  there  is  nowhere  such  a 
thing  as  a  butcher's  shop.  The  cattle  range  the  woods  at  will, 
only  to  be  brought  in  occasionally  to  be  freshly  branded  with 
the  owner's  mark.  When  one  is  to  be  killed  it  is  "  rounded 
up  "  and  driven  in  to  the  pueblo.  The  method  of  slaughter 
is  stabbing  in  the  region  of  the  heart,  just  above  the  left  fore- 
leg. In  a  large  village  fresh  meat  will  be  procurable  perhaps 
thrice,  but  not  more  than  once,  a  week  in  the  hamlets.  The 
richer  villagers  take  it  in  turns  to  kill,  and  thus  become  butcher 
for  the  day  only,  usually  flying  a  flag  as  a  sign  that  fresh  meat 
is  to  be  bought.  Nothing  could  be  queerer  than  the  effect  of 
this  co-operative  butchering.  The  Jefe  of  a  town  will  invite 
you  into  his  drawing-room  or  the  Yucatecan  equivalent,  and 
there  you  will  find  joints  of  blood-boltered  pork  and  beef 
hanging  from  a  clothes-line,  with  palm-leaves  beneath  to  catch 
the  gore.  He  is  butcher  for  the  day,  that's  all.  Meat  is  never 
jointed,  but  cut  into  strips  and  carried  home  fastened  to  a 
string;  cut  just  as  it  is  wanted  by  the  kilo,  about  two  pounds. 
Joints  such  as  we  have  are  literally  unknown  in  Yucatan,  and 
for  the  very  excellent  reason  that  there  are  no  means  of  cooking 
them. 

Their  culinary  methods  are  typical  of  that  indolence  which 
is  the  chief  characteristic  of  all  Yucatecans.  Their  staple 
dishes  are  stews,  boiled  greasily  :  the  sloven  cook's  way  of 
throwing  meat  into  a  pot.  When  your  host  has  put  before 
you  a  great  messy  stew  of  fowl,  onion,  and  potato  swimming 
in  fat,  he  gives  you  a  cup  of  black  coffee  and  the  meal  is  over. 
Puddings  and  sweets  are  things  for  which  he  has  no  taste, 
and  vegetables  are  never  served,  as  with  us,  separately,  or 
indeed  many  of  them  at  all.  This  is  not  due  to  any  lack  of 
fruit  or  vegetable,  because  it  was  the  case  even  where  both 
abounded.  Nothing  short  of  a  cuhnary  earthquake  would 
alter  the  prehistoric  kitchen  methods  of  the  average  Yucatecan 
family.     Every  day  of  the  year,  morning  and  evening,  the 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS    TO-DAY  351 

housewife  is  at  the  metate  or  stone  tray  crushing  the  maize 
for  the  tortillas ;  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  American 
flour  is  coming  into  the  country  in  ever-increasing  quantity. 
Obstinate  or  conservative — you  can  call  it  which  you  like — 
they  will  take  no  advantage  of  an  import  which  would  mean 
that  they  could  bake  twice  a  week  and  get  it  over. 

The  average  Yucatecan  housewife  is  always  at  the  metate 
in  season  and  out  of  season.  For  most  Yucatecan  families  it 
is  a  hand-to-mouth  existence,  though  they  live  in  a  land  which, 
were  they  industrious,  might  be  made  to  "  smile  with  plenty." 
The  Yucatecan  is  an  easygoing  creature,  fond  of  drink, 
women,  dancing,  and  his  cigarette.  He  has  no  love  of  work, 
and  will  spend  the  few  dollars  he  has  earned  in  a  reckless  spirit, 
as  if  he  had  millions  :  afterwards  Uving  on  his  tortillas  till 
luck  comes  his  way  again.  In  all  this  he  is  but  a  replica  of  his 
kinsmen  in  Mexico.  This  natural  indolence  is  encouraged  by 
the  weakness  of  even  Diaz's  rule.  He  is  just  as  much  afraid  of 
the  people  to-day  as  when  first  made  President :  he  is  afraid 
to  tax  rum  or  other  spirits.  He  has  to  get  his  revenues  out 
of  the  foreigners.  People  in  Yucatan  complain  because  labour 
is  scarce.  If  machinery  was  imported  to  thresh  com,  to  take 
but  one  example,  they  would  be  able  to  sell  the  staple  food  of 
the  land  cheaper  and  pay  higher  wages.  As  it  is,  perfectly 
prohibitive  duties  are  levied  on  all  the  machinery  coming 
into  all  the  Mexican  ports.  Thus  throughout  the  whole 
RepubUc  agriculture  is  practically  where  it  was  in  the  time  of 
Moctezuma.  The  anomaly  of  all  this  is  very  patent  in  Yucatan, 
where  the  henequen  lords  have  foimd  an  Eldorado  in  the 
cactus  and  are  each  year  improving  their  "  plant,"  while  too 
stupid  to  see  that  if  the  same  progressive  methods  were  applied 
to  the  general  cultivation  of  their  covmtry,  they  would  soon 
be  able  to  view  without  terror  the  aboUtion  of  that  detestable 
slavery  which  is  to-day  essential  to  their  fortune-building. 

Fortunes  are  waiting  to  be  picked  hke  blackberries  by 
the  foreign  "  devil  "  who  will  teach  the  Yucatecan  to  use  what 
bountiful  Nature  has  given.  Where  is  there  better  food  than 
orange  marmalade  ?  Every  garden  almost  in  Yucatan 
swarms  with  the  bitter-orange  tree,  and  the  fruit  rots  and  falls, 
no  one  thinking  it  worth  while,  although  sugar-cane  grows 
almost  wild,  to  bring  the  two  together  and  make  the  delicious 
preserve.  In  Merida  we  had  to  pay  two  shiUings  for  a  half- 
pound  glass  jar  of  French  marmalade.  Year  after  year  the 
Yucatecan  is  content  to  pay  seventy-five  centavos  (eighteen 


35«  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

pence)  for  a  tin  of  American  preserved  fruit,  when  he  could 
get  the  same  from  Cozumel  for  five.  It  is  the  same  with  every- 
thing. They  pay  seventy-five  for  a  kilo  (two  pounds)  of  salt 
or  dried  fish,  when  they  could  buy  their  own  fish  for  twelve 
centavos  a  kilo  and  salt  it  themselves  :  or  catch  the  fish  them- 
selves. This  trade  is  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  Cuban 
sailors.  The  Yucatecans,  for  the  matter  of  that  all  Mexicans, 
hate  foreign  intrusion,  but  they  will  do  nothing  themselves. 
Fancy  a  country,  the  chief  omnipresent  difficulty  of  which  is 
the  density  of  its  forests,  importing  timber  !  Yet  that  is 
what  Yucatan  is  doing  to-day.  She  buys  American  lumber ; 
she  allows  her  markets  to  be  glutted  with  American  fruits  and 
meat  when  she  could  supply  her  own  wants  at  an  extra- 
ordinarily small  cost  of  labour ;  and  if  there  were  deficiencies, 
Mexico  possesses  some  of  the  finest  cattle-raising  land  and 
fruit-soils  as  rich  as  California. 

With  the  only  pots  and  pans  German-made  and  so  heavily 
taxed  that  you  have  to  give  five  shillings  for  a  saucepan  which 
in  London  would  cost  you  a  shilling  or  at  most  eighteen  pence, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  the  culinary  arrangements  of  Yucatan 
are  as  antediluvian  as  they  are.  If  they  do  not  stew,  they 
grill  over  the  burning  wood.  Time  and  time  again  birds  we 
had  shot  were  reduced  to  such  a  dried  and  mummified 
condition  as  to  be  quite  uneatable.  The  simplicity  of  their 
cooking  methods  is  only  matched  by  the  simplicity  of  their 
service.  None  but  wealthy  folk  use  knives  or  forks.  The 
tortilla,  doubled  up,  serves  as  spoon  and  fork,  and  a  knife  is 
not  needed  as  the  meat  is  cut  up  before  it  is  cooked.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  saltspoon  in  Yucatan.  You  are  expected 
to  shake  the  salt  out  or  take  it  out  with  your  fingers.  Indeed 
the  saltspoon  seems  unknown  in  Mexico  too.  There  may  be 
one,  but  we  never  saw  it.  Tables  are  rare,  and  most  families 
squat  round  their  food  in  true  Indian  fashion.  As  a  rule 
women  do  not  eat  with  the  men  ;  but  they  and  the  children 
have  what  is  left  after  their  husbands  and  brothers  have 
finished.  We  found  this  often  very  embarrassing  ;  but  our 
protests  were  greeted  with  as  much  ingratitude  by  the  ladies 
as  astonishment  by  the  men. 

We  met  and  lived  with  all  grades  of  Yucatecans  ;  but 
perhaps  it  was  on  the  coasting  vessels  that  you  saw  most  of 
general  Yucatecan  manners.  These  are  often  curiously  con- 
tradictory. They  will  tear  ungainly  pieces  of  meat  to  pieces 
with  their  fingers  ;    but  they  religiously  wash  those  fingers 


YUCATAN   AS   IT   IS   TO-DAY  353 

after  each  meal.  They  will  use  the  edge  of  their  white  shifts 
as  a  handkerchief ;  but  even  the  common  sailors  will  clean 
their  teeth  after  a  meal.  They  will  convert  the  gunwale 
of  the  boat  into  a  sedes  ster  cor  aria,  engaging  you  in  "  animated 
conversation  "  the  while  ;  yet  nothing  would  induce  them  to 
imdress  before  you  and  bathe.  They  will  spit  on  the  floor 
of  your  room  ;  but  they  will  not  move  an  inch  in  your  presence 
without  a  "  ccm  permiso."  They  are  a  frugal  race,  and  you 
were  expected  to  throw  the  broken  remains  of  your  tortillas 
into  a  pail  provided  for  the  purpose,  though  they  do  not  appear 
again.     Perhaps  the  women  eat  them. 

We  have  written  something  earher  about  Yucatecan 
music  when  describing  the  dance  at  Holboch.  Nothing  could 
well  be  more  distressing  than  it  is.  Every  town  of  any 
size  aspires  to  have  a  band.  The  worst  German  band  which 
ever  disgraced  itself  and  murdered  melody  for  filthy  lucre 
in  London's  streets  is  a  combination  of  the  orchestras  of 
Strauss  and  Sousa  compared  with  a  Yucatecan  band.  As 
one  lies  in  one's  hammock  at  night,  forced  to  hsten  to  the 
musical  hell  it  creates,  one  wonders  why  indignant  citizens 
do  not  leap  from  their  hammocks  and  make  butchery  in  the 
plaza  of  its  unscrupulous  members.  But  the  Yucatecans  like 
it.  The  more  noise  the  merrier  for  them.  A  most  popular 
custom  is  what  they  call  la  serenata.  At  about  two  or  three 
in  the  morning  half  a  dozen  young  men  make  "  rough  music  " 
(it  is  very  rough)  with  drums  and  concertincLS  outside  the 
home  of  some  village  belle.  In  the  stillness  of  the  darkness 
it  is  not  without  its  weird  charm,  if  it  lasted  a  few  minutes. 
But  it  often  lasts  an  hour  or  more  till  you  become  suicidal. 
Their  discordant  music  is  matched  by  their  singing  voices. 
No  Yucatecan  knows  the  first  principles  of  voice-production. 
A  tiny,  squeaky  chant  is  the  most  they  achieve.  Indeed 
there  is  something  very  queer  about  the  Yucatecan  voice, 
even  in  talking  :  a  curious  whiny  sing-song,  beginning  low 
and  ending  in  an  almost  indescribable  treble  note. 

The  true  Irish  wake  is  a  dearly  prized  institution  among 
the  Yucatecans.  Every  occasion  is  seized  on  for  an  indulgence 
in  the  habanero  they  so  much  love ;  and  death  itself  cannot 
rob  the  liquid  refreshment  o^  its  charm.  The  corpse  is  toaisted 
till  the  mourners  are  incoherent ;  singing,  dancing,  and 
merrymaking  going  on  often  in  the  very  room  where  the 
body  hes.  Burial  follows  within  twenty-four  hours  owing  to 
the  climate,  and  in  those  many  places  which  are  only  periodi- 

23 


354  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

cally  visited  by  a  priest  there  is  no  religious  ceremony  in  the 
cemetery ;  its  place  being  taken  by  the  chief  mourner 
"  standing  "  a  bottle  of  habanero,  which  is  literally  broached 
at  the  graveside  and  drunk  instanter.  By  the  richer  folks 
a  grave  is  bought  but  no  grave  is  dug ;  the  coffin  rests  on  the 
level  of  the  earth  as  a  rule,  owing  to  the  rocky  nature  of  the 
soil.  At  the  head  is  placed  a  big  stone,  at  the  foot  another. 
Then  over  the  coffin  is  built  a  dome  of  cement.  In  some 
cemeteries  bodies  are  buried  in  walls,  the  coffin  on  its  end. 
Where  a  family  is  only  rich  enough  to  buy  ground  enough  for 
one  grave,  on  a  second  death  the  headstone  is  removed  and 
the  coffin  is  drawn  out  and  the  bones  placed  in  the  new  coffin, 
the  old  one  being  burnt.  In  cases  of  the  very  poor  the  body 
is  buried  as  far  down  as  the  nature  of  the  soil  permits,  and  at 
the  end  of  a  year  the  bones  are  dug  up  by  the  relatives  and 
burnt  there  and  then  in  the  cemetery.  The  most  prominent 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  mourning  is  a  long  streamer  of 
crape  or  black  cloth,  which  is  fastened  to  the  door  of  the  house 
and  left  there  till  it  rots  off.  On  the  first  anniversary,  when 
the  soul  of  the  deceased  is  believed  to  revisit  its  old  haunts, 
there  is  a  second  wake  and  much  drinking. 

Yucatan  is  a  happy  hunting  ground  for  "  Jacks  in  Office." 
The  pomposity  of  this  race  of  parvenus  would  be  amusing  if 
it  were  not  that  they  have  the  power  to  wreck  your  plans. 
We  have  described  our  delightful  encounter  with  the  Jefe 
of  Isla  de  Mujeres.  We  suffered  many  other  annoyances  from 
jumped-up  officials  who  took  a  childish  pleasure  in  exhibiting 
their  authority.  A  delicious  example  of  what  the  Mexican 
official  is  capable  of  when  he  puts  his  mind  to  it  was  afforded 
to  us  at  Vera  Cruz  on  our  return.  The  British  armoured  cruiser 
"  Euryalus  "  came  over  from  Jamaica  flying  the  flag  of  Rear- 
Admiral  Inglefield.  President  Diaz  seized  the  chance,  the 
first  since  the  King  gave  him  the  G.C.B.,  of  paying  a  pretty 
compliment  to  England  by  sending  down  an  invitation  to  the 
admiral  and  his  officers  to  visit  the  capital.  The  "  Euryalus," 
fearing  to  come  into  the  harbour,  which,  even  despite  the 
splendid  work  of  Sir  Weetman  Pearson,  is  still  risky  for  vessels 
of  such  draught  as  a  British  man-of-war,  anchored  just  outside 
the  breakwater.  To  her,  after  the  admiral  had  landed,  went 
out  the  port  pilot,  for  whom  she  had  not  signalled,  as  she  was 
not  coming  in.  He  asked  the  captain  to  move  a  little  as,  so 
he  said,  they  were  in  the  fairway.  It  was  probably  merely 
an  excuse  to  show  an  authority  which  he  had  thought  flouted. 


YUCATAN   AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  355 

The  British,  with  the  utmost  courtesy,  at  once  got  steam  up 
and  moved  a  few  cables'  lengths.  Later  in  the  day,  to  the 
natural  astonishment  of  the  commander,  a  bill  for  pilotage 
arrived — nineteen  dollars  !  The  British  officers  in  charge 
refused  to  pay  this  absurd  demand,  and  then  the  port  authori- 
ties actually  had  the  impudence  to  summon  them  to  appear 
to  show  cause  why  they  should  not  pay.  This  latter  demand 
was  ignored.  But  the  beauty  of  the  situation  lay,  of  course, 
in  the  fact  that  while  these  Vera-Cruzian  jackanapeses  were 
dunning  the  huge  battleship,  Diaz  and  Mexico  City  were 
banqueting  and  cheering  the  admiral  and  his  staff  as  guests 
of  the  nation.  When  we  left  Vera  Cruz  the  truth  about  this 
heavenly  incident  had  not  leaked  out.  The  port  authorities 
must  have  had  a  very  bad  quarter  of  an  hour  indeed,  if  the 
relentless  Diaz  ever  heard  of  it. 

That  is  the  Mexican  all  over ;  and  the  Yucatecan  is,  as 
is  natural,  worse  because  his  authority  is  still  pettier.  The 
American  traders  with  the  islands  feel  the  full  force  of  it.  A 
captain  sailing  from  such  a  port  as  Key  West  to  Cozumel 
must  go  to  Ascension  Bay,  some  eighty  miles  south  of  his 
destination,  because  none  but  a  national  boat  can  retail  the 
goods  to  the  islands.  When  he  gets  to  Ascension  Bay,  he 
must,  with  his  o^vn  labour  (the  Yucatecans  will  not  supply 
men),  unload  and  place  his  cargo  on  the  beach.  Then,  when 
it  has  been  tallied  with  the  "  manifest,"  the  unfortunate 
trader  has  to  reload,  again  at  his  own  cost,  in  a  native  vessel : 
afterwards  sailing  his  boat  empty  behind  the  other.  Arrived 
at  Cozumel  he  has  to  unload,  again  at  his  own  cost,  and  then, 
and  then  only,  is  he  entitled  to  meet  his  customers. 

The  tyranny  of  the  Custom  House  officials  is  the  tyranny 
of  men  who  are  intent  on  filling  their  own  pockets.  Here  is 
an  example.  An  American  captain  shipped  a  cargo  of  tomatoes, 
upon  which  no  import  duty  is  payable.  At  Ascension  Bay 
it  was  found  that  he  had  on  board  one  more  barrel  than  was 
declared  in  his  "  manifest."  This  was  quite  an  accident. 
A  barrel  more  or  less  on  his  final  takings  would  not  have 
amounted  to  more  than  a  few  coppers,  and  in  any  case  the 
cargo  was  not  dutiable.  No  matter :  the  officials  fined  him  ten 
dollars  on  every  barrel  of  tomatoes  he  had  on  board — fifty — 
making  a  fine  of  £50.  Could  greater  injustice  be  conceived  ? 
He  refused  to  pay,  and  his  cargo  was  impounded.  He  appealed 
to  Mexico  City  and  the  fine  was  immediately  remitted.  The 
blackguards  at  Ascension  Bay  knew  it  was  not  the  law.     They 


356  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

were  simply  going  to  pocket  the  fine.  Another  man's  cargo 
of  potatoes,  because  he  had  a  sack  or  two  too  little,  was  left  to 
rot  on  the  beach  because  he  refused  to  pay  a  ludicrous  fine. 

Of  amusements  the  Yucatecans  have  none  that  could  be 
called  really  national.  They  are  happiest  when  they  are 
loafing  and  drinking.  They  are  all  fond  of  gambling,  and 
play  the  ordinary  card  games.  All  forms  of  lotteries  are  popu- 
lar, and  a  State  lottery  is  run  from  which  the  profit  netted 
by  a  high  official  is  said  to  be  as  much  as  twenty  thousand 
dollars  a  month. 

Matters  theatrical  in  Merida  were  in  rather  a  spring-cleaning 
condition  when  we  were  there,  for  the  old  theatre  was  dis- 
mantled and  a  really  fine  one  was  being  built  at  a  great  cost. 
Meanwhile  the  bull-ring  had  been  requisitioned  and  turned 
into  a  theatre.  There  we  went  one  evening  and  witnessed 
a  very  second-rate  play.  The  chief  thing  which  struck  us 
was  the  fact  that  between  the  acts  the  women  all  stood  up  in 
the  stalls  and  gazed  round  at  the  people.  It  was  so  singularly 
un-European. 

Bull-fights  are  still  immensely  popular  throughout  Yu- 
catan ;  but  a  praiseworthy  effort  is  being  made  by  those 
in  authority  to  discountenance  them,  though  without  much 
effect.  At  Merida  there  are  several  yearly,  but  it  is  a  very 
decadent  form  of  the  Spanish  sport.  Around  the  ring  are 
small  shelters  into  which  the  toreador  can  dodge  when  the 
bull  charges.  Thus  there  is  little  or  no  real  courage  demanded 
of  the  fighters.  Nothing  draws  the  people  as  a  bull-fight 
will,  and  to  those  two  or  three  towns  where  fights  are  annual 
fixtures  thousands  flock  in  from  miles  around.  Tizimin  is 
such  a  place.  At  the  fiesta  held  while  we  were  there  no  less 
than  thirty  thousand  people  collected.  It  is  the  love  of 
blood  which  really  attracts,  and  a  fight  is  successful  or  not 
according  to  the  number  of  animals  slain.  In  the  seven  days 
at  Tizimin  fifty  bulls  died.  It  is  really  mere  clumsy  brutal 
slaughter,  for  the  creatures  are  undersized  steers  as  a  rule, 
with  about  as  much  fight  in  them  as  an  English  cow.  The 
young  bloods  of  Yucatan  are  fond  of  improvising  these  bullock 
baitings  ;  and  one  showed  us  with  pride  a  scar  on  his  wrist, 
a  memento  of  a  fight  two  or  three  days  earlier.  It  was  just 
such  a  scratch  as  a  child  would  get  while  out  blackberrying. 

As  we  wrote  in  an  earlier  chapter,  so  complete  is  the  isolation 
of  the  two  sexes  pubhcly,  that  the  casual  visitor  would  conclude 
that  the  Yucatecans  were  a  most  moral  race.     You  never  see 


HAtlENUA    CHILDKliN. 


INDEPENDENT    INDIANS. 


P«  33Q 


YUCATAN    AS    IT   IS   TO-DAY  357 

youths  and  girls  walking  together.  Such  a  sight  as  Hyde 
Park,  for  instance,  presents  on  a  summer  evening,  a  couple, 
sometimes  two,  on  each  seat,  carrying  on  a  passionate  court- 
ship, regardless  of  the  passers,  you  would  never  see  in  Yucatan 
if  you  lived  there  fifty  years.  More  than  that :  you  never 
see  a  husband  out  with  a  wife.  An  American  who  had  known 
the  country  for  ten  years  told  us  that  he  had  never  seen  a 
young  fellow  and  girl  walking  together  in  the  evening.  Of 
course,  the  richest  girls  never  walk  at  all ;  and  their  lovers 
are  found  for  them.  The  poorer  maidens  find  their  own  at 
a  precociously  early  age.  If  trouble  results,  the  lover  can  adopt 
one  of  three  courses.  He  can  marry  the  girl ;  pay  a  fine  of  five 
hundred  dollars  to  her  father ;  or  go  to  prison  for  five  years. 
These  Draconian  rules  obviate  our  degrading  system  of  affiUa- 
tion  summonses.  The  utmost  cynicism  prevails  in  all  sex 
questions,  and  it  would  probably  be  hard  to  find  a  Yucatecan 
father  who  would  not  be  ready  to  sell  his  daughters,  so  long 
as  the  price  was  high  enough.  And  it  is  really  sale,  not  merely 
the  worldly  method  of  England  and  America  of  getting  a 
rich  suitor  and  a  fat  settlement  for  a  girl.  The  fathers  pocket 
the  money. 

Courtship  is  a  formal  affair  conducted  always  before  one 
or  both  parents.  If  a  youth  fancies  a  maid,  he  calls  at  her 
house  and,  scarcely  noticing  her,  talks  to  her  father  about 
anything  in  the  world  but  his  errand.  This  must  go  on  for 
many  nights  till  he  is  allowed  by  etiquette  to  mention  his 
desires.  If  he  is  an  eligible  parti,  he  is  then  admitted  to 
the  family  circle  as  son-in-law  elect.  There  are  two  stages 
in  the  wedding  ;  first  a  publication  of  it,  somewhat  equivalent 
to  our  banns,  which  constitutes  the  formal  betrothal ;  and 
then  the  ceremony,  at  which  there  are  no  bridesmaids  or 
groomsmen.  By  law  the  civil  ceremony  alone  is  legally 
binding,  but  in  practice  the  rehgious  service  is  also  often  held. 
How  loosely  this  all  works  in  practice  can  scarcely  be  realised 
till  it  is  known  that  money  unlocks  every  door  in  this  venal 
land.  Men  can  do  just  what  they  like  in  Yucatan  if  they  can 
pay.  On  one  of  the  islands  a  young  American  trading  on  the 
coasts,  with  the  full  approval  of  her  parents  who  slept  in  the 
next  room,  spent  every  night  with  an  unmarried  girl,  though 
they  all  knew  that  he  was  himself  married.  These  temporary 
alliances  are  easily  arranged,  if  you  satisfy  the  father's  demands, 
which  are  by  no  means  exorbitant  from  all  accounts. 

In  Merida  this  venality  has  reached  such  a  pitch  as  to  be 


358  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

really  hardly  credible.  There  is  one  old  ogre,  whose  name . 
we  must  naturally  suppress,  who  has  a  charming  wife  ;  and 
keeps  five  mistresses  formally,  not  counting  those  informal 
ones  represented  by  the  dozens  of  slave-girls  on  his  ranches. 
But  all  this  is  not  enough.  He  buys  young  girls  from  their 
parents,  most  of  them  well-to-do  folk,  and  when  he  has  ruined 
and  tired  of  them,  he  assigns  them  as  wives  to  one  of  his 
countless  dependents  with  a  small  dowry.  Quite  scientific, 
is  it  not  ?  And  that  man  is  regarded  with  veneration  by 
every  Yucatecan.  They  would  all  like  to  be  as  rich  as  he  and 
do  likewise.  Meanwhile,  at  least  they  have  daughters  to  sell, 
black-eyed,  black-haired,  plump-limbed  Hebes,  fresh  enough 
and  dainty  enough  to  whet  the  appetite  of  even  the  most  jaded 
ogre,  the  most  glutted  of  purse-proud  Yucatecan  Joves. 

All  this  is  really  no  one's  business,  and  to  the  stranger 
does  not  matter  a  pin.  We  are  not  Hot  Gospellers  intent  on 
preaching  morality.  Yucatecan  vices  affect  Yucatecans  alone. 
The  ogres  are  pleased,  the  avaricious  fathers  are  pleased,  and 
the  girls  are  doubtless  willing  victims  of  this  combination  of 
greed  and  lust.  All  this  is  no  one's  affair  if — and  it  is  a  very 
large  IF — all  this  very  agreeable  self-indulgence  was  only  at 
the  expense  of  freemen  and  equals.  But  when  a  whole  race 
is  forcibly  prostituted  to  the  avarice  and  lasciviousness  of  an 
upstart  people,  trespassers  in  the  land  ;  when  womanhood,  as 
pure  and  sweet  as  any  which  the  Almighty  God  has  created 
for  the  world's  honour,  is  trampled  under  swinish  feet ;  when 
a  barbarous  serfdom  stops  not  at  murder  in  its  unrestrained 
tyranny,  then  of  a  truth  it  is  time  for  some  one  to  raise  his 
voice  against  such  race  exploitation.  We  do  so  here,  and 
on  our  return  to  London  we  addressed  to  the  President  of 
Mexico  a  letter  telling  him  the  truth.  To  this  letter  His 
Excellency  made  no  reply.  It  is  more  than  likely  it  never 
reached  him,  was  suppressed  by  an  official.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  we  now  consider  ourselves  at  liberty  to  publish  it,  and 
we  do  so  here  as  the  fitting  close  to  this  review  of  social 
Yucatan. 

To  His  Excellency 
Senor  General  Diaz,  Mexico 

Most  Excellent  Sir  and  General, 

We  travelled  out  to  Mexico  with  the  purpose  of  ex- 
ploring North-Eastem  Yucatan  and  studying  the  wonderful 
ruined  cities  there. 


YUCATAN   AS    IT    IS   TO-DAY  359 

We  held  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Your  Excellency  ex- 
plaining who  we  were  and  what  we  hoped  to  do,  but  on  arrival 
in  Mexico  City  we  were  dissuaded  from  presenting  it  and 
were  referred  to  your  Minister  of  Public  Instruction. 

We  had  much  desire  to  see  Your  Excellency  and  present 
our  respects  in  person,  for  in  recent  years  there  has  been  a 
growing  interest  taken  by  the  English  in  Mexico  owing  to 
the  publication  of  two  books  by  an  Enghsh  lady,  Mrs.  Alec 
Tweedie,  Mexico  As  I  Saw  It  and  Your  Excellency's  own 
biography,  which  books  have  made  much  stir.  Being,  how- 
ever, strangers  in  a  strange  land,  we  yielded  to  advice  and  saw 
Senor  Justo  Sierra.  He  was  courteous  and  gave  us  letters  to 
Senor  Olegario  MoUna,  then  Governor  of  Yucatan,  to  General 
Bravo,  and  passports  satisfactory,  but  scarcely  generous. 

On  landing  in  Yucatan  we  immediately  presented  the 
letter  ot  Senor  Sierra,  together  with  a  most  courteous  letter 
from  ourselves,  at  the  House  of  the  Governor.  Not  only  did 
Seiior  Molina  do  nothing  for  us  ;  he  had  not  even  the  courtesy 
to  acknowledge  the  letters ;  a  breach  of  manners  for  which 
there  could  be  no  excuse. 

We  regret  to  tell  Your  Excellency  that  during  the  sub- 
sequent months  we  spent  in  Yucatan  we  met  with  discourtesy, 
inhospitality  and  neglect  from  the  officials  such  as  would  be 
impossible  here  in  England  if  one  of  your  people  visited  us. 
We  went  among  the  Yucatecans  with  no  feelings  but  those  of 
kindUness,  and  an  enthusiastic  interest  in  the  attempt  we  were 
making  to  throw  fresh  light  upon  the  problem  of  Mayan 
archaeology.  But  for  those  foolish  enough  to  take  an  interest 
in  their  country's  past,  Yucatecans,  rich  and  poor,  appear  to 
have  no  feelings  but  that  of  a  pitying  contempt  combined  with 
an  eager  desire  to  share  in  "  plucking  "  them. 

The  only  kindness  we  received  was  from  Spanish  Cubans 
attached  to  the  plantations,  and  Seiiores  Aristegui  and  Augusto 
Peon,  the  latter  apologising  to  us  for  the  gross  rudeness  of 
Senor  Molina,  whom  he  declared  to  be  an  ill-bred  parvenu. 

We  hked  the  Indians  as  much  as  we  disliked  the  Yucate- 
cans, and  we  deeply  regret  the  terrible  cruelties  and  massacres 
which  we  know  have  been  and  we  fear  still  are  being  perpetrated 
in  your  name  in  Quintana  Roo.  The  state  of  that  Territory, 
as  we  told  Seiior  Peon  and  reported  by  letter  to  Seiior  Sierra, 
could  not  possibly  be  worse.  General  Bravo,  who  behaved 
to  us  in  a  singularly  discourteous  and  shuffling  way,  declares 
the  war  to  be  over.     This  is  absolutely  untrue.     We  lived 


36o  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

some  time  on  the  east  coast  and  in  Cozumel,  and  we  know  that 
the  war  can  never  end  except  by  a  brutal  poHcy  of  extermina- 
tion entirely  unworthy  of  Your  Excellency's  great  record 
and  of  Mexico  if  she  is  to  retain  her  place  among  civilised 
Powers.  General  Bravo  has  no  effective  control  over  the 
country,  as  we  are  prepared  to  and  shall  prove  in  the  book 
which  we  are  about  to  pubhsh. 

Last,  but  not  least,  so-called  civilised  Yucatan  is  rotten 
with  a  foul  slavery,  the  blacker  because  of  its  hypocrisy  and 
pretence.  We  have  gathered  facts  which  make  truly  a  sad 
story.  The  girls  and  women  on  the  haciendas  are  treated 
like  cattle,  a  prey  to  the  detestable  lusts  of  the  haciendados 
and  their  sons  ;  Indian  workmen  are  flogged,  even  to  death, 
and  in  one  case  which  came  to  our  knowledge  those  who 
attempted  to  expose  such  foul  murder  were  put  into  Merida 
prison  without  trial,  and,  as  we  are  informed,  are  still  there. 
For  the  Indian  there  is  no  justice,  and  at  his  expense  the  great 
henequen  growers  daily  increase  their  millions,  some  of  which 
they  lavishly  used  in  their  attempts  to  hide  from  Your  Ex- 
cellency the  utter  rottenness  and  degradation  of  Yucatan's 
social  system.  If  Your  Excellency  desires  particulars  we  shall 
gladly  give  ourselves  the  honour  of  sending  names  and  details. 

We  have  the  honour  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  opportunity 
which  now  offers  of  expressing  to  you  our  sentiments  of  the 
highest  consideration  and  respect. 

We  have  the  Honour  to  Remain 

Your  Excellency's 
Obedient  and  faithful  Servants  and  Admirers 

{Signed)     C.  A. 
F.  J.  T.  F. 

His  Excellency 
Senor  General  Don  Porfirio  Diaz, 
Chapultepec, 
Mexico. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  GREEN  GOLD  OF  YUCATAN 

EIGHT  hundred  million  Mexican  dollars ! 
Eighty  million  pounds  sterling  ! 

These  are  the  profits  which  the  score  or  so  of  Yucatecan 
henequen  growers  are  said  to  have  divided  in  the  last  fifteen 
years.  What  then  is  this  Pactolus-plant  from  which  has 
been  crushed  this  river  of  wealth  ?  It  is  true  enough  that 
half  the  world  does  not  know  how  the  other  half  lives,  and 
this  is  a  good  example,  for  there  is  probably  not  i  per  cent,  of 
Enghshmen,  and  scarcely  more  than  lo  per  cent,  of  Americans 
(though  the  States  is  the  main  market  for  the  staple  product 
of  Yucatan)  who  could  tell  you  to  what  botanical  family  it 
belongs,  or  indeed  that  it  is  a  plant  at  all. 

Henequen  (Spanish  jeniquen  or  geniquen)  is  a  fibre 
commercially  known  as  Sisal  hemp,  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
obtained  from  a  species  of  cactus,  the  Agave  Sisalensis,  first 
cultivated  around  the  tiny  port  of  Sisal  in  Yucatan.  The 
older  Indian  name  for  the  plant  is  Agave  Ixtli.  From  its 
fleshy  leaves  is  crushed  out  a  fine  fibre  which,  from  the  fact 
that  it  resists  damp  better  than  ordinary  hemp,  is  valuable 
for  making  ships'  cables,  but  the  real  wealth-producing  use  of 
which  is  so  bizarre  that  no  one  in  a  hundred  guesses  would 
hit  on  it.  It  is  used  in  the  myriad  corn-binding  machines  of 
America  and  Canada.  They  cannot  use  wire,  and  cheap 
string  is  too  easily  broken.  Henequen  is  at  once  strong  enough 
and  cheap  enough.  Hence  the  piles  of  money  heaping  up  to 
the  credit  of  Yucatecans  in  the  banks  of  Merida. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  henequen  was  known  to  and  possibly 
cultivated  by  the  ancient  inhabitants  of  Yucatan  ;  but  its 
commerical  value  was  not  discovered  until  late  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  The  first  henequen  plantation  was  formed 
in  1850.     Soon  there  were  several  more,  though  they  were  one 

36X 


362  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

and  all  on  the  humblest  scale  both  as  regards  extent  and 
methods  of  cultivation.  It  was  our  good  fortune  to  visit  one 
of  the  very  earliest,  that  of  Yaxche,  now  the  property  of 
Sefior  Augusto  Peon,  and  the  photographs  reproduced 
are  of  that  estate.  Sefior  Peon  hi^nself  conducted  us  over 
it,  and  told  us  that  as  a  lad  he  remembered  the  first  clearing 
being  made  in  the  woods  for  the  Eldorado-cactus  about  1850. 
A  mere  acre,  that  was  all !  To-day  he  has  close  on  six  thousand 
acres  under  cultivation  on  this  farm  alone,  with  villages 
containing  four  thousand  souls,  and  it  would  be  quite  rash 
to  hazard  a  guess  at  his  wealth.  He  is  certainly  a  sterling 
millionaire  three  or  four  times  over,  and  he  told  us  that  his 
income  had  actually  doubled  in  less  than  ten  years.  Such 
is  henequen  ! 

But  the  plant  was  a  long  time  winning  its  way  to  its  pre- 
sent exalted  position.  Until  within  the  last  thirty  years  the 
only  market  for  the  fibre  was  the  Mexican  Republic  itself, 
where  fortunes  were  being  coined  by  the  crushing  of  yet 
another  cactus,  the  Agave  Americana  or  maguey,  from  which 
is  obtained  the  foul-smelling  pulque,  dearly  loved  drink  of  all 
Mexicans.  And  then  three  decades  back  henequen  began 
to  win  a  reputation  abroad,  particularly  in  the  States.  In 
1880,  97,351  bales,  weighing  39,501,725  lb.  and  valued  at 
about  one  and  three-quarter  million  dollars,  were  exported. 
In  1904,  627,700  bales,  weighing  about  207,141,000  lb.  and 
valued  at  15,629,730  dollars,  were  exported,  and  during  1906 
the  amount  shipped  rose  to  726,785  bales,  each  averaging 
330  lb.  in  weight  and  totalling  in  value  between  twenty- 
five  and  twenty-six  million  dollars.  Of  these,  595,024  bales 
were  sent  to  the  United  States  (or  186,747  to  New  Orleans; 
144,916  to  Boston  ;  119,688  to  New  York  ;  63,620  to  Texas 
City ;  59,235  to  Mobile  ;  and  20,818  to  Galveston)  ;  the 
remaining  131,761  bales  going  to  various  ports  in  Canada, 
Europe,  and  Cuba. 

These  amazing  figures  tell  their  own  tale  of  the  growth 
of  the  staple  industry  of  Yucatan.  A  local  trade  has  in  a 
few  short  years  become  almost  a  world-monopoly,  and  from 
being  a  poor  land  the  Peninsula  has  become  a  Monte-Cristo 
territory.  Once  the  fibre  was  discovered  by  the  corn  growers, 
the  trade  went  up  by  leaps  and  bounds  ;  but  it  was  the 
Spanish-American  War  of  1898  which  gave  it  its  great  boom, 
and  it  may  be  said  to  be  still  "  booming."  The  destruction 
and  stoppage  of  the  Manila  hemp  crops  in  the  Philippines 


THE  GREEN  GOLD  OF  YUCATAN     363 

during  the  conflict  gave  the  Yucatecans  their  chance.  They 
met  the  shortage,  and  importers  found  that  they  had  in  the 
henequen  fibre  at  once  a  cheaper  and  a  stronger  corn-binder. 
To-day  Yucatan  can  sell  all  the  henequen  she  can  grow,  and 
every  month  sees  more  and  more  woodland  reclaimed  and 
prepared  to  bear  its  share  in  swelling  the  receipts  of  the  Meridan 
mushroom  millionaires. 

In  North-West  Yucatan  you  can  travel  mile  after  mile, 
league  after  league,  and  see  absolutely  nothing  but  henequen. 
It  seems  to  need  no  soil.  Out  of  the  grey  boulder-strewn  ground 
stick  the  great  green  pineapple-like  stalks  crowned  with  a 
widely  parted  bunch  of  fleshy  green  leaves  with  black  thorny 
points.  Planted  in  even  lines  about  four  yards  apart,  they 
stretch  endlessly  towards  the  horizon,  the  monotony  broken 
only  here  and  there  by  the  grey  stone  walls,  hke  those  of  a 
Yorkshire  farm,  which  mark  off  and  enclose  each  plantation. 
As  we  wandered  round  his  huge  estate,  Seiior  Peon  explained 
to  us  the  process  through  which  henequen  goes  from  planting 
till  it  is  fibre  white  and  clean.  In  preparing  land  for  planting 
it  must  first  be  cleared  of  all  timber,  and  in  the  outlying  dis- 
tricts from  dawn  till  sundown  one  hears  the  ring  of  the  axe 
as  the  Indians  fell  the  trees.  After  this  clearing  comes  a 
period,  usually  about  a  year,  during  which  the  land  is  allowed 
to  lie  fallow,  the  fallen  timbers  rotting  and  everything  prepar- 
ing for  the  flames.  Towards  the  end  of  the  dry  season  this 
burning  takes  place.  This  is  also  the  method  of  preparing  the 
milpas  or  maize  fields  for  their  new  crops,  and  thus  in  April 
all  over  the  country  you  see  mighty  columns  of  black  smoke 
rising  into  the  cloudless  blue,  like  the  smoke  of  burnt  offerings 
to  the  Harvest-God.  If  rain  does  not  come — and  it  very 
rarely  does — the  fallen  timber  and  dried  undergrowth  bum 
for  days  until  there  is  nothing  left  but  a  few  black  smouldering 
tree-trunks,  which  by  another  season  will  have  been  effectually 
dealt  with  by  the  broad-mandibled  digging  ant  and  the  myriad 
woodlice.  A  second  year  is  allowed  to  pass  before  the 
henequen  is  planted.  Usually  maize  is  sown  on  the  clearing 
for  the  season,  and  then  once  again  they  set  fire  to  it  all  and 
with  this  second  conflagration  the  ground  is  ready. 

But  the  planter  must  wait  for  the  rains.  These  come 
towards  the  end  of  May.  Dark  clouds  roll  up,  and  between 
five  and  six  o'clock  each  day  a  sharp  shower  may  be  expected. 
By  the  middle  of  June  the  floods  of  the  sky  break  loose,  and 
for  hours  each  day  and  night  the  baked  earth  is  deluged.     Now 


364  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  haciendado  must  get  his  plants  ready.  This  is  an  easy 
matter  if  he  has  other  plantations.  In  any  of  these  where  the 
agave  is  old  and  has  had  most  of  its  leaves  cut  away,  he  can 
find  what  he  wants.  From  some  of  the  plants  a  long  stalk- 
like stem  will  be  seen  shooting  up  from  the  centre,  and  this 
will  have  thrown  out  branches  from  which  the  seeds  have 
grown  and  fallen  to  the  ground.  Thus  around  its  base  there 
will  be  young  seedlings  in  plenty  sprouting.  The  largest  of 
these  are  taken.  On  the  bigger  haciendas  there  are  regular 
nurseries  for  these  seedlings,  which  are  carefully  fostered 
for  a  year  or  so  that  they  may  be  of  fair  size  when  they  are 
needed  for  planting  out.  These  are  planted  in  the  new  clearing 
in  rows  about  fourteen  feet  apart,  each  plantling  being  eight 
feet  from  its  neighbour. 

Now  there  is  a  wait  of  five  or  six  years  before  the  first 
crop  of  leaves  can  be  cut.  But  if  this  is  rather  a  wearily  long 
time  for  the  planter  to  wait  for  his  returns,  at  least  it  is  not 
expensive.  For  the  plants  need  little  or  no  attention  :  all 
that  is  necessary  is  to  keep  the  spaces  between  the  rows  fairly 
free  from  weeds  which  would  otherwise  smother  the  young 
cactuses.  At  the  end  of  the  fifth  year  the  plants  are  ready 
for  their  first  cutting,  and  the  healthy  ones  will  bear  well  for 
twelve  or  fifteen  years.  The  cutting  is  begun  at  the  base  of 
the  stem,  where  the  leaves  are  more  fully  developed.  Eight 
to  ten  are  cut  at  a  time,  and  usually  three  or  four  cuttings 
are  made  each  year,  so  that  the  average  yield  of  each  plant 
is  about  thirty-two  leaves  annually.  Slowly  year  by  year 
the  cutting  creeps  nearer  the  top,  and  the  space  between  the 
leaves  and  the  ground  becomes  greater.  When  the  top  is 
reached  all  the  leaves  which  will  ever  grow  have  grown  and 
the  plant  is  useless  unless  the  seed-stem  has  appeared,  when 
it  is  left  for  the  production  of  young  plants.  If  it  has  not 
run  to  seed,  then  it  is  cut  down  and  left  to  rot,  the  ground 
being  ready  again  at  once  for  replanting. 

But  the  rearing  and  cutting  of  this  "  green  gold  of  Yu- 
catan "  is  not  all.  There  is  a  long  process  before  it  is  ready 
to  be  sold  under  the  hammer  of  an  American  or  European 
auctioneer,  in  much  the  same  way  as  cotton  is  dealt  with  on 
the  Liverpool  or  Manchester  Exchanges. 

Crossing  and  recrossing  each  henequen  plantation,  small 
toy-like  two-foot  gauge  iron  tracks  are  laid,  on  which  small 
mule-drawn  trolley-cars  convey  the  henequen  leaves  to  the 
hacienda  buildings.     On  some  of  the  larger  of  the  haciendas 


THE  GREEN  GOLD  OF  YUCATAN     365 

these  tracks  often  cover  thirty  or  forty  miles,  and  at  first  sight 
it  would  seem  an  minecessarily  expensive  means  of  transit, 
and  that  it  would  be  cheaper  to  cart  it  as  an  English  farmer 
does  his  com.  But  when  you  remember  the  cost  of  making 
level  roads  over  miles  of  rock-strewn  plantation,  and  that  each 
fleshy  leaf  represents  an  average  weight  of  four  or  five  pounds, 
and  that  on  a  trolley-car  drawn  by  one  mule  can  be  packed 
one  thousand  of  these  weighing  about  two  tons  and  needing 
four  or  five  carts  with  mules  and  men  to  match,  you  see  that 
the  trolley  method,  after  the  original  outlay,  is  far  cheaper. 
On  the  trolleys,  then,  the  henequen  leaves  are  conveyed  to  the 
hacienda  buildings,  where  an  elaborate  machinery  is  waiting 
to  crush  out  the  gold-yielding  fibre.  The  track  runs  right 
into  the  building,  the  mule  is  unhooked,  and  returns  once 
more  to  the  plantation  with  an  empty  car  for  another  load 
of  fodder  for  the  crusher.  And  while  the  empty  car  is  re- 
turning the  leaves  of  the  newly  arrived  laden  car  are  being 
dealt  with. 

Three  or  four  Indians  set  to  work  to  arrange  the  leaves  so 
that  their  black-pointed  ends  are  all  in  one  direction.  Next 
these  thorny  points  are  severed  by  a  machete  and  in  small 
bundles  of  six  or  eight  the  leaves  are  handed  to  men  who 
are  feeding  a  shding  belt-like  platform  about  a  yard  wide, 
and  on  this  they  are  conveyed  to  the  machine.  Before  they 
enter  its  great  blunt- toothed,  gaping  jaws,  they  are  finally 
arranged,  as  the  shding  belt  goes  its  unending  round,  so  that 
they  do  not  enter  more  than  one  at  a  time.  Woe  betide  the 
Indian  who  has  the  misfortune  to  get  his  fimgers  in  these  re- 
volving jaws  of  the  gigantic  crusher,  and  many  indeed  are 
there  fingerless,  handless,  and  armless  from  this  cause.  The 
leaves  enter  broadways,  for  the  blunt-toothed  rollers  are  a 
little  wider  than  the  longest  leaves.  On  entering  the  first 
rollers  the  fleshy  leaf  is  crushed  hke  sugar-cane  in  a  crusher. 
The  sappy  juices  fly  around,  but  the  wet,  dripping  machine 
continues  with  its  work  and  the  thick,  greeny  water  runs 
into  a  trough  below  to  be  carried  away  in  a  channel  back  to 
the  fields.  The  leaf  is  passed  from  one  to  another,  each  crush- 
ing away  more  fleshy  matter  until  the  fourth  or  fifth  roller 
has  been  reached,  when  it  is  no  longer  a  leaf,  but  one  mass 
of  greeny-yellow  threads  in  the  hands  of  an  Indian  who  is 
kept  continually  receiving  it  as  it  is  thrown  from  the  machine. 

The  next  process  is  the  drying  of  the  fibre,  which  takes 
place  in  drying-yards.      From  the  machine  to  these  another 


366  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

trolley-track  is  laid,  and  there  on  wire  lines,  as  will  be  seen 
in  our  illustration,  the  fibre  is  hung  in  the  scorching  sun.  The 
Yucatecan  can  always  be  sure  of  his  weather,  and  the  fibre 
is  no  more  bother  to  him  until  the  sun  has  thoroughly  bleached 
the  greeny-yellow  threads.  Two  or  three  days  of  this  sun- 
bath  is  quite  enough,  and  then  the  last  process,  before  the 
Yucatecan  rakes  in  his  shekels,  is  the  pressing  of  the  fibre 
into  bales  ready  for  transport.  This  final  process  is  very 
similar  to  our  English  hay-trussing.  The  fibre  is  placed  in 
the  press,  weighed,  and  compressed  into  the  smallest  possible 
space  and  bound  with  rope. 

But  what  becomes  of  the  green  pulpy  waste  which  forms 
90  per  cent,  of  the  fleshy  leaves  before  it  is  put  into  the 
machine  ?  Part  of  this  is  water  and  the  remainder,  as  the  fibre 
is  thrown  off  one  roller  to  another,  falls  through  the  machine 
into  a  truck-like  trolley  awaiting  it  underneath.  It  is  a  mangled 
mass  of  verdure,  and  to  the  inexperienced  eye  as  useless  as 
the  green  water  running  away  in  the  narrow  channel.  But 
the  Yucatecan  finds  use  for  it,  and  it  is  carried  to  the  corral, 
where  we  find  a  herd  of  cattle  making  a  meal  off  it  amid  myriads 
of  tormenting  flies. 

The  fibre  is  not  sent  direct  from  the  grower  to  the  market, 
but  is  passed  through  the  hands  of  the  large  agents  resident 
in  the  country,  who  ship  it  to  the  various  ports.  This  has 
become  such  a  trade  in  itself  that  one  agent  has  grown  so 
rich  upon  his  commissions  that  he  now  runs  a  special  line 
of  steamers  between  Progreso  and  New  York  for  the  traffic, 
as  well  as  holding  the  "  lion's  share  "  in  the  railway  concerns 
of  the  Peninsula.  Owing  to  the  shallow  water  at  Progreso 
and  the  cost  of  dredging  on  coral-beds,  he  has  had  to  go  to 
the  expense  of  having  his  boats  built  specially  for  the  traffic. 
But  his  flat-bottomed  small-dfaught  steamers  have  made  his 
family  one  of  the  richest  of  the  money-grubbing  ring  in  Yuca- 
tan. For  there  is  money  for  every  one  who  touches  the  magic 
fibre  except  the  miserable  Indian,  by  whose  never-ending 
labours  the  purse-proud  monopolists  of  the  Peninsula  are 
enabled  to  be  ever  adding  to  their  ill-gotten  gold.  There  are 
in  Yucatan  to-day  some  400  henequen  plantations  of  from 
25  to  20,000  acres,  making  the  total  acreage  under  cultiva- 
tion some  140,000  acres.  The  cost  of  production,  including 
shipping  expenses,  export  duties,  etc.,  is  now  about  7  pesos 
(14s.)  per  100  kilogrammes.  The  average  market  price  of 
henequen  is  28  pesos  per  100  kilogrammes,  so  the   planter 


HENEQUEN     ilbkE    IN    DRYING-GROUND. 


THE  GREEN  GOLD  OF  YUCATAN     367 

gets  a  return  of  400  per  cent.  All  this  is  obviously  only 
possible  as  long  as  he  can  get  slave-labour  and  the  hideous 
truth  about  the  exploitation  of  the  Mayans  is  kept  dark.  The 
Indian  gets  a  wage  of  50  centavos  for  cutting  a  thousand 
leaves,  and  if  he  is  to  earn  this  in  a  day  he  must  work  ten 
hours.  Near  the  big  towns,  75  centavos  are  paid,  but  prac- 
tically, on  many  haciendas,  it  is  so  managed  that  the  labour 
is  paid  for  by  his  bare  keep. 

There  is  much  in  the  henequen  agave  beside  its  fibre  which 
might  be  turned  to  commercial  uses,  but  these  side-products, 
such  as  alcohol  made  from  the  juicy  substance  of  the  leaves, 
and  paper  made  from  the  leafless  stems  of  the  plants,  have 
so  far  been  neglected.  An  enterprising  German  has  started 
a  rope  factory  near  Merida  with  a  capital  of  $2,500,000,  but 
this  is  the  first  attempt  at  working  up  the  hemp  in  the  country. 
Henequen  is  cultivated  in  Cuba  and  the  Bahamas  and  the 
Germans  have  introduced  its  culture  into  East  Africa,  where 
they  have  planted  150,000  agaves.  Whether  it  will  thrive 
there  is  doubtful,  but  in  both  Cuba  and  the  Bahamas  it  has 
been  a  failure,  the  plant  for  some  reason  degenerating  and 
producing  a  poor  fibre. 


CHAPTER    XXII 

FLORA  AND   FAUNA 

THERE  is  perhaps  nothing  which  strikes  one  at  first 
sight  in  traveUing  through  Yucatan  so  much  as  the 
absence  of  animal  hfe.  For  the  stay-at-home  the  usual  idea 
of  the  Tropics  is  that  it  is  that  part  of  the  earth  where  the 
deadliest  serpents  wait  for  you  in  the  seclusion  of  the  bath- 
room, or  twine  round  your  legs  while  you  breakfast ;  that 
such  cohorts  of  fearsome  creatures  watch  for  you  with  the 
patience  of  writ-servers  at  the  garden  gate  that  it  is  a  miracle 
if  by  lunch-time  you  find  you  still  "  have  the  luck  to  live  "  ; 
and  that  a  reckless  indulgence  in  even  moderate  walking- 
exercise  will  most  certainly  end  in  your  faUing  a  prey  to  one 
or  more  of  those  great  beasts  which,  like  the  troops  of  Midian 
in  the  hymn,  "  prowl  and  prowl  around." 

The  truth  is  very  disappointing.  Nothing  is  ever  so  bad 
or  so  good  as  we  expect  it  to  be.  The  Tropics,  as  far  as  Yu- 
catan is  concerned,  are  a  case  in  point,  both  as  regards  beauty 
and  dangers.  The  most  luxuriant  of  Yucatecan  woodland 
scenes  would  have  real  difficulty  to  hold  its  own  in  a  beauty 
competition  against  an  English  lane  when  June  has  lavished 
her  wild  roses  and  her  honeysuckle  on  the  sun-kissed  hedge- 
rows. And  for  the  matter  of  risk,  a  modem  city  infested 
with  motor-cars  is  the  "  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  "  com- 
pared with  an  average  part  of  the  tropics  of  Central  America. 
There  are,  of  course,  real  dangers,  but  one  usually  survives 
them,  probably  for  the  same  reason  that  a  dyspeptic  lives 
so  long,  because  one  takes  care.  The  annual  death-roll  in 
Paris,  London  or  New  York  from  motor-cars  is  far  higher 
than  the  yearly  toll  of  native  lives  taken  by  the  serpents 
of  Yucatan. 

Yet  the  country  is  famous  for  its  snakes,  but  you  do 
not  see  them.  In  all  our  wanderings  and  campings  in 
forests,  in    all  our    often    foolhardy    explorations    of    weird 

368 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  369 

caves  and  pot-holes,  so  frequented  by  snakes  as  sleeping- 
places,  we  only  saw  seven,  and  none  of  them  were  large.  The 
most  exciting  adventure  we  had  was  in  one  of  the  islands. 
We  were  following  a  very  narrow  Indian  trail  single  file,  when 
the  one  of  us  who  was  leading  ran  his  face  right  into  a  snake 
which  was  stretched  across  the  path  at  the  height  of  one's 
eyes,  its  tail  curled  round  a  shrub  on  one  side,  its  head  round 
one  on  the  other  side.  It  was  a  tree-climbing  species,  a  bright 
green,  and  looked  evil  enough,  but  was  probably  harmless. 
We  had  but  half  an  hour  before  seen  the  snake  the  Mayan 
Indians  call  uolpoch  (pronounced  wolpoach),  the  deadliest  of 
all  New  World  serpents,  perhaps  the  deadhest  in  the  world. 
It  was  among  the  leaves  at  the  side  of  the  path,  and  wriggled 
away  as  we  approached.  It  is  about  two  or  at  most  three 
feet  long,  of  a  dirty  brown-grey  colour  with  the  belly  a  trifle 
lighter  in  tint,  and  is  remarkable  as  having  both  ends  blunt 
like  the  slow-worm.  It  is  said  to  be  the  only  snake  known 
to  attack  before  it  is  attacked,  and  is  specially  feared  as  being 
most  active  at  night  when  it  wanders  around.  Another  of 
its  accomplishments  is  an  extraordinary  power  of  leaping  :  it 
is  alleged  to  be  capable  of  a  jump  of  six  feet  high.  We  do 
not,  however,  guarantee  this  serpentine  high  jump,  as  we 
never,  thank  goodness,  saw  it  perform.  The  uolpoch's  bite 
is  always  fatal,  and  the  Indians  dread  the  Uttle  blunt-nosed 
reptile,  which  sleeps  the  sunny  hours  away  hidden  in  hollows 
in  rocks  or  in  ditches. 

The  rattlesnake  is  very  common  in  Yucatan,  especially 
in  the  south  and  more  marshy  portions  of  the  Peninsula.  The 
python,  too,  is  met  with  in  the  lower-lying  forests,  though 
we  did  not  have  the  luck  to  see  one.  They  never,  however, 
attain  the  size  of  the  monsters  which  infest  the  valley  of  the 
Amazon  and  its  tributaries.  There  are  several  of  the  Elaps 
genus  of  serpents  in  Yucatan,  the  most  common  being  Elaps 
coraUina,  or  coral-snake,  ringed  with  red  and  black.  He  is 
a  pretty  fellow  but  highly  venomous,  and  shows  much  fight 
if  provoked.  A  friend  of  ours  trod  on  one  which  was  asleep 
in  the  cab  of  an  engine,  of  all  places  in  the  world.  He  luckily 
had  on  top-boots,  or  probably  he  would  not  have  lived  to 
tell  the  tale,  for  the  little  beast  was  round  on  him  and  made 
a  deep  mark  on  the  leather  in  a  second.  The  Spilotes  Salvini 
(Greek  <nnXo<i,  a  spot),  a  large  but  quite  harmless  serpent, 
is  of  spotted  black  with  a  yellowish  belly,  and  attains  almost 
pythonic  dimensions,  the  average  specimens  being  about  six 

24 


370  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

and  a  half  feet  long.  Another  harmless  serpent  family,  the 
DipsadidcB  (so  called  from  the  Greek  hi^^a,  thirst,  in  allusion  to 
an  ancient  superstition  that  this  genus  of  snakes  caused  a  mortal 
thirst,to  which  Shelley  refers  in  his  "  Prometheus  Unbound  "  : 
"  He  thirsted,  as  one  bit  by  a  dipsas"),  is  represented  in  Yucatan 
by  the  Dipsas  splendida,  a  tree-climbing  reptile  with  bright 
mottled  skin,  averaging  two  to  two  and  a  half  feet  in  length. 
It  is  chiefly  active  at  nights,  when  it  climbs  in  search  of  the 
insects  which  form  its  food. 

In  the  larger  mammals,  particularly  the  carnivora,  the 
Peninsula  is  notably  poor.  Practically  the  only  formidable 
creature  is  the  jaguar,  which  would,  however,  never  deserve 
Bottom's  immortal  dictum  anent  the  king  of  carnivora,  for 
it  is  in  no  sense  "  a  terrible  wild-fowl."  Felts  onca,  to  give 
the  animal  the  dignity  of  his  full  official  title,  is  most  like  the 
leopard  or  panther  of  the  Old  World.  He  is  of  a  tawny  colour 
with  spots  which  differ,  however,  from  the  true  leopard  inas- 
much as  they  are  ocellated,  i.e.  eyed,  black  with  a  tawny  eye 
of  colour  in  the  centre,  or  are  broken  up  into  rosettes  of  black 
on  a  tawny  ground.  Full-grown  specimens  measure  between 
four  and  five  feet  in  length  with  a  tail  of  some  two  feet.  In 
Yucatan  the  jaguar  is  distinctly  cowardly,  and  will  never  attack 
unless  in  a  comer  or  when  attacked.  We  met  one  when  wander- 
ing one  afternoon  in  the  woods  around  Chichen,  and  though  we 
were  unarmed,  it  fled  incontinently  and  climbed  a  tree.  This 
they  are  very  fond  of  doing,  especially  when  pursued  by  dogs. 
The  natives  face  them  with  the  machete  as  their  only  weapon, 
and  show  much  courage  often  in  tracking  them  to  the  caves 
where  they  shelter.  While  even  the  biggest  jaguar  will  avoid 
an  encounter  with  man,  they  are  bold  in  their  night  attacks 
upon  cattle  and  pigs.  At  one  settlement  on  the  east  coast 
which  we  visited,  thirteen  porkers  had  disappeared  in  as  many 
nights,  and  though  a  hunt  was  organised  in  one  expedition 
of  which  we  took  part,  the  "  tiger,"  as  the  natives  insist  on 
caUing  the  jaguar,  had  not  been  found  when  we  left. 

Allied  to  the  Felis  onca  are  two  other  "  cats,"  the  Felis 
pardalis  and  Felis  concolor  or  puma,  which  are  both  found  in 
Yucatan  and  the  neighbouring  parts  of  Central  America.  The 
former  is  far  more  rare  than  the  jaguar,  and  somewhat  smaller, 
measuring  seldom  more  than  three  feet  in  length  of  body,  with 
a  two-foot  tail.  It  is  of  a  greyish-tawny  colour  and  is  more 
like  a  wild  cat  than  a  leopard,  its  tail  striped  and  coat  marked 
with  small  black  spots.     The  puma  is  of  a  uniform  greyish  or 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  371 

reddish-grey,  and  is  between  three  and  four  feet  in  length.  The 
young  are  bom  marked  with  dark-brown  spots  in  three  rows 
on  the  back,  and  the  whole  coat  marked  sporadically.  The 
puma  is  greatly  hated  by  stock-breeders  because  of  its  habit 
of  kilUng  but  not  eating.  One  puma  has  been  known  to  kill 
many  animals  in  a  night,  just  lapping  a  little  of  the  blood  of 
each  and  then  leaving  the  carcase  for  a  fresh  prey. 

The  creature  which  is  at  once  the  largest  and  least  offensive 
in  Yucatan  is  the  tapir,  a  genus  of  Ungulata  or  hoofed  animals, 
in  general  appearance  looking  much  what  one  could  imagine 
a  cross  between  a  rhinoceros  and  a  wild  pig  would  be  like. 
Indeed  naturalists  incUne  to  the  belief  that  the  tapir  is  some- 
what closely  allied  to  the  former  animal.  There  are  four 
known  species,  three  American — viz.  Tapirus  terrestris,  T. 
Bairdi,  and  T.  Dowi,  and  one  Asiatic,  T.  malayanus.  Though 
the  species  differ  somewhat  in  size,  the  tapir  is  usually 
about  the  size  of  a  small  ass.  The  body,  which  in  the  adult 
is  of  a  uniform  deep  brown,  though  the  young  are  marked 
with  yellowish  spots  and  stripings,  is  short,  stout  and  clumsy, 
with  thick  legs  ending  in  four  small  hoofs  on  the  fore  feet 
and  three  on  the  hind.  It  has  small  piggy  eyes,  and  its  most 
characteristic  feature  is  a  queer  flexible  snout  prolonged 
some  inches  beyond  the  jaw,  but  apparently  without  the 
prehensile  powers  of  the  elephant's  trunk.  The  tapir  loves 
water,  and  when  attacked  by  a  jaguar  will,  where  possible, 
take  to  a  river  or  lake,  diving  and  plunging.  It  is  quite 
inoffensive  and  never  attacks  man,  but  when  at  bay  will 
give  ugly  bites.  It  is  very  powerful,  and  has  so  thick  a  skin 
that  it  can  force  its  way  through  the  densest  forest.  The 
commonest  tapir  is  the  South  American  one,  the  T.  terrestris, 
but  this  is  not  found  north  of  the  Panama  Isthmus.  The 
tapir  of  Yucatan  and  Guatemala  is  T.  Dowi.  This  with  T. 
Bairdi  is  generally  regarded  as  generically  separate  from  other 
tapirs,  and  they  are  scientifically  termed  Elasmognathus.  All 
tapirs  are  vegetarians,  Uving  on  the  shoots  of  trees,  on  fruits 
and  seeds  ;  but  they  will  eat  almost  any  substance  which 
they  come  across.  Thus  pieces  of  wood,  clay,  and  stones 
have  been  found  in  their  stomachs. 

The  liveUest  sport  in  Yucatan  is  derived  from  the  peccary, 
a  kind  of  swine,  belonging  to  the  genus  Dicotyles,  of  which 
there  are  two  species.  The  name  is  probably  from  an  American 
Indian  word  which  is  cited  by  Pennant  as  paquiras.  The 
peccary  is   the   only  indigenous  representative   of   the  Old 


372  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

World  SuidcB  or  swine  in  the  New  World,  and  both  its  species 
are  found  in  Yucatan — D.  iorquatus  or  tajacu,  the  Texan  or 
collared  peccary,  and  D.  labiatus,  the  white-lipped  peccary. 
The  range  of  the  former  is  from  Arkansas  to  Patagonia,  while 
the  latter  are  restricted  to  Central  America  and  as  far  south 
as  Brazil.  The  generic  name  is  from  the  Greek  8LK6Tv\o<i  {Bi 
two,  and  KOTvXrj,  a  hollow),  and  was  given  the  peccaries  by 
Cuvier  in  allusion  to  a  curious  glandular  organ  on  the  back 
which  was  regarded  by  old  travellers  as  a  second  navel.  This 
gland  secretes  a  foul-smelling  liquid,  and  unless  quickly  removed 
after  the  animal  has  been  killed,  taints  the  flesh,  making  it 
almost  uneatable.  We  hunted  peccary  and  eat  them.  The 
meat  has  a  rather  rich,  spicy  taste,  like  stuffed  veal,  and  is 
fairly  tough.  The  two  species  breed  freely  together,  but  the 
true  D.  lahiati  are  far  the  fiercer  of  the  two,  go  about  in  small 
herds  and  are  known  to  attack  man  and  even  the  jaguar. 
The  Yucatecans  hunt  them  with  dogs,  and  seldom  does  an 
expedition  return  without  leaving  two  or  three  of  the  latter 
dead  in  the  woods,  ripped  up  by  the  short  tusks  of  the  peccary 
boars.  The  animals  make  their  home  in  natural  hollows  and 
caves,  or  in  holes  beneath  large  trees.  In  appearance  they 
are  like  pigs,  but  the  bristles  are  coarser  and  variegated  some- 
what like  a  porcupine's.  They  have  fewer  teeth  than  the 
ordinary  pig — viz.  thirty-eight  as  against  forty-four — and  a 
very  short  tail. 

The  deer  of  Yucatan  are  quite  small,  about  the  size  of  our 
fallow-deer.  They  are  of  two  species,  Cervus  virginianus 
and  Cariacas  toltecus,  the  latter  quite  small.  You  see  little 
or  nothing  of  either  in  North-Eastern  Yucatan,  but  on  the 
southern  sierras  there  are  a  good  many  in  the  thick  woodland. 
Down  south,  too,  but  still  further  south,  you  find  the  monkey 
most  frequenting  this  part  of  Central  America,  of  the  genus 
Mycetes,  familiarly  known  as  "  the  howler "  or  "  howling 
monkey,"  in  allusion  to  its  strange,  weird,  and  very  loud 
cries,  which  can  be  heard  miles  off.  This  peculiar  vocal  power 
is  due  to  an  extraordinary  development  of  the  larynx,  the 
hyoid  bone  in  which  is  very  much  enlarged  and  excavated, 
thus  forming  a  hollow  drum  which  acts  as  a  reverberator. 
The  species  of  Mycetes  found  in  Yucatan  and  Guatemala  is 
M.  villosus  or  ursinus.  The  Mycetince  are  the  largest  monkeys 
of  America,  nearly  three  feet  in  body  length,  with  long  pre- 
hensile tails.  They  are  quite  black,  and  are  almost  entirely 
arboreal  in  habits,  living  in  the  trees.     The  Indians  regard 


FLORA   AND    FAUNA  373 

their  flesh  as  a  great  luxury,  and  white  men  agree  that  it  is 
very  palatable.  Another  monkey,  rare  in  Yucatan,  but  very 
common  in  Guatemala,  is  the  spider-monkey  or  sapa- 
jou  (genus  A  teles),  of  which  the  species  A.  vellerosus  is  the 
commonest. 

Of  smaller  mammals  there  are  a  good  number  in  Yucatan. 
There  is  the  coati,  known  to  naturalists  as  Nasua  narica,  but 
always  called  by  the  natives  pisote.  It  is  closely  related  to 
the  racoons,  but  has  a  longer  body  and  tail  and  a  thin  and 
flexible  snout,  hence  the  generic  name  Nasua  (Latin  nasus, 
nose).  It  is  of  a  dark-brown  colour,  and  is  thus  distinguished 
from  its  Brazihan  cousin  the  red  ring-tailed  coati  {Nasua 
rufa).  It  is  carnivorous,  and  is  particularly  fond  of  the  large 
lizards,  the  iguanas,  which  abound  throughout  the  Peninsula. 
Birds,  too,  faU  prey  to  them.  They  are  distinctly  attractive- 
looking  little  creatures  and  are  readily  tamed.  We  saw  a 
pair  in  a  courtyard  of  a  restaurant  in  Merida,  which  eagerly 
made  friends  with  the  guests  in  return  for  a  piece  of  meat  or 
fruit.  The  Indians  relish  their  flesh  greatly,  and  the  animals 
have  httle  chance  if  they  are  rash  enough  to  venture  near  a 
village.  Sitting  one  night  in  the  wonderful  tropical  moon- 
hght  at  a  lonely  settlement,  suddenly  an  indescribable  din  of 
dogs  yelping  and  Indians  shouting  arose.  We  really  thought 
the  place  was  about  to  be  raided  when  we  saw  the  women 
as  well  as  the  men  and  boys  arm  themselves  with  cudgels  and 
make  for  the  wood.  A  yelp  or  two  and  a  piteous  cry,  and 
then  with  huge  deUght  an  Indian  rushed  back  with  the  still 
quivering  furry  body  of  the  poor  coati.  A  fire  was  built, 
and  in  a  very  few  minutes  the  creature  had  been  dried  into 
that  most  unappetising  mummification  in  which  all  Indian 
cooking  of  meat  ends.  The  pisote  tastes  much  like  an  old 
rabbit. 

Talking  of  rabbits,  these  ubiquitous  rodents  are  found 
in  Yucatan,  but  in  no  great  numbers.  Hares  are  unknown. 
The  common  racoon  {Procyon  lotor)  is  found,  but  there  are  no 
crab-eating  racoons  [Procyon  cancrivorous)  in  Yucatan  :  these 
are  restricted  to  South  America  proper.  The  racoon  eats 
fruits  and  is  fond  of  young  maize  ;  but  he  is  also  carnivorous, 
and  will  attack  fowls,  biting  their  heads  off  and  sucking  their 
blood.  He  feeds,  too,  on  grubs  and  frogs,  but  he  most  enjoys 
sugar-cane,  to  crops  of  which  he  is  very  destructive  In 
Yucatan  is  found  the  grey  fox  of  the  States  {Urocyon  vir- 
ginianus).    A  pretty  httle  fellow  is  the  grey  squirrel  {Sciurus 


374  THE    AMERICAN    EGYPT 

carolinensis) ,  which  has  a  marvellously  bushy  tail,  A  species 
of  the  agouti  {Dasyprocta  punctata  or  acouchy)  is  found  in 
Yucatan,  a  guinea-pig-like  creature,  the  size  of  a  small  rabbit, 
which  when  disturbed  gives  pig-like  grunts.  There  are  many 
bats,  the  commonest  being  the  so-called  bulldog  bat,  in 
allusion  to  the  bulldog-like  expression  due  to  the  pendulosity 
of  the  skin  around  the  snout  and  jaw.  A  genus  of  armadillos 
{Tatusia  novemcincta)  usually  called  Dasypus  novemcinctus, 
the  only  armadillo  found  in  the  United  States,  is  fairly  common 
in  the  woods  of  Yucatan. 

While  writing  of  Mammalia  we  must  not  forget  to  mention 
that  curious  creature  the  manatee,  which  is  found  fairly 
plentifully  in  the  creeks  and  shallow  inlets  around  the  coast 
of  the  Peninsula.  In  Guatemala  and  Southern  Yucatan  it  is 
called  Vaca  de  Agua  (Sea-Cow).  Its  scientific  name  is  Manatus 
americanus  or  australis.  In  shape  it  is  something  like  a 
small  whale  ;  but  it  belongs  to  a  different  order,  though  it 
was  once  believed  to  be  a  herbivorous  cetacean.  It  is  some 
ten  or  twelve  feet  in  length  with  a  stout  naked  body,  fish- 
shaped,  with  no  trace  of  hind  limbs,  and  ending  in  a  wide 
shovel-shaped  tail.  The  fore  limbs  are  paddles,  on  which 
there  are  rudimentary  nails  ;  the  eyes  and  ears  are  small ; 
the  neck  short  and  thick.  They  live  in  either  fresh  or  salt 
water,  but  never  far  from  land  or  far  from  sea.  They  feed 
on  sea-grasses  and  never  leave  the  water.  Their  flesh,  which 
is  white  and  sweet-tasting,  is  relished  by  the  natives,  who 
hunt  them  as  did  their  ancestors,  usually  with  harpoon,  for 
their  fat  and  leather  as  well  as  for  the  meat. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  the  snakes  in  Yucatan,  and 
now  we  must  say  a  few  words  as  to  other  reptiles.  Yucatan 
is  the  happy  hunting  ground  for  the  largest  land  lizard  known 
to  Natural  History,  the  iguana.  His  prevailing  colour  is  grey, 
shading  to  a  light  green  with  a  lighter  tint  on  the  belly,  and 
he  has  black  markings  crosswise  his  whole  length  to  his  tail 
and  a  crest  of  spines  down  his  back.  The  creature  is  gro- 
tesquely ugly  with  his  great  pouched  under- jaw  and  eyes 
snake-like  in  their  smallness,  and  as  you  often  meet  specimens 
upwards  of  three  feet  long  (they  are  known  to  attain  five  feet 
or  more  in  length),  one  is  apt  to  hasten  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  are  fearsome  foes.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  are  the 
most  inoffensive  of  creatures  unless  molested,  feeding  entirely 
on  a  vegetable  diet.  But  they  can  and  will  bite,  if  annoyed, 
and  we  came  across  cases  of  Indians  whose  fingers  had  been 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  375 

bitten  off,  though  of  course  there  is  no  venom  like  that  of  a 
snake  in  the  iguana's  teeth.  They  are  arboreal  in  habits, 
but  the  Yucatecan  iguanas  love  most  to  make  their  homes 
in  the  ruined  fa9ades  and  roofs  of  Mayan  palaces.  We  hardly 
ever  explored  a  building  without  one  of  these  great  clumsy 
reptiles  busthng  out  of  its  hiding-place  and  scurrying  up  the 
palace  front  or  the  falling  stairways,  looking  for  all  the  world 
like  a  gargoyle  animated  of  a  sudden.  The  flesh  of  these 
lizards  is  much  appreciated  by  the  natives,  and  tastes  like 
chicken.  There  are  a  great  quantity  of  smaller  lizards  in 
Yucatan ;  in  fact,  as  you  walk  through  the  woods  the  under- 
growth, especially  in  the  simnier  patches,  seems  positively 
ahve  with  them.  Browns,  greens,  and  yellows ;  mottled, 
striped,  and  spotted  ;  some  of  them  are  really  very  pretty, 
and  all  of  them  quite  harmless. 

There  are  plenty  of  alligators  to  be  found  round  the 
coasts,  particularly  on  the  east,  where  they  shelter  in 
shallow  muddy  streams  and  in  the  mangrove  swamps,  or 
bask  on  the  landward  side  of  the  islets  which  so  often  only 
lie  a  few  yards  from  the  mainland.  The  alhgator  is  a 
savage  beast,  more  savage  it  is  said  than  his  congener 
the  crocodile,  and  will  take  the  offensive  often  without  pro- 
vocation. If  anything,  they  look  more  repulsive  in  their 
habitat  than  they  do  in  a  Zoo,  where  they  are  surrounded 
by  the  softening  influences  of  civilisation  and  the  sweet  sim- 
phcity  of  a  cemented  tank.  We  heard  a  story  worth  quoting, 
as  at  once  illustrating  the  brute's  ferocity  and  the  courage  of 
the  Indian.  Down  in  the  Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec  two  Indians 
were  floundering  in  a  swamp  when  one  suddenly  disappeared 
into  a  hole,  to  utter  in  a  second  a  howl  of  agony,  while  the 
water  around  him  became  tinged  with  blood.  Down  in  the 
hole  an  alligator  had  seized  him  by  the  leg,  biting  it  off  at 
the  knee.  Without  a  moment's  hesitation  his  comrade  leapt 
into  the  pool  and,  planting  his  foot  firmly  on  the  lizard's 
head,  thus  kept  it  from  making  a  second  attack  while  he 
helped  the  exhausted,  bleeding  man  to  scramble  out. 

The  average  aUigator  in  Yucatan  measures  between  seven 
and  nine  feet,  though  the  one  typical  of  the  genus,  the  Alligator 
lucius  or  mississippiensis  of  the  United  States,  attains  a 
length  of  seventeen  or  eighteen  feet.  In  Guatemala  and  the 
Rio  Hondu  a  special  species  is  found  known  as  the  Alligator 
punctulatus.  AUigators  differ  from  true  crocodiles  in  having 
a  shorter  and  flatter  head,  cavities  in  the  upper  jaw  into  which 


376  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  long  teeth  of  the  under-jaw  fit,  and  feet  much  less  webbed. 
It  is  a  very  common  mistake  to  believe  that  the  true  crocodile 
is  unknown  in  the  New  World.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  typical 
one,  the  Crocodilus  americanus,  long  confused  with  the  alli- 
gator, has  recently  been  identified  in  Florida  and  the  West 
Indies.  The  alligator  feeds  chiefly  on  fish,  and  his  voracity 
is  such  that  he  lives  on  very  strained  relations  with  the  in- 
habitants of  his  fishy  world,  which  avoid  him  with  the  same 
fanatical  earnestness  with  which  a  Kaffir  avoids  his  mother- 
in-law.  But  the  alligator  is  more  than  a  glutton  ;  he  is  a 
cannibal,  and  does  not,  unfortunately,  even  respect  the  family 
circle.  His  wife  has  to  be  very  careful  to  put  the  children  to 
bed  before  he  returns  from  his  wanderings,  for  if  he  catches 
sight  of  them  or  gets  the  least  chance  he  instantly  eats  them. 
The  female  alligator  lays  a  great  quantity  of  large  eggs, 
dropping  them  in  the  sand,  where  they  are  left  to  be  hatched 
by  the  sun's  heat.  As  many  as  sixty  eggs  may  be  found  in 
one  nest  arranged  in  separate  layers. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  turtles  which  are  found  in  huge 
quantities  around  the  coasts  and  in  the  islands.  There  are 
any  number  of  their  land  cousins,  the  tortoises,  in  the  woods 
of  Yucatan,  most  of  them  quite  small,  among  them  the  box 
tortoise  {Cinostemon  leucostomum) ,  that  queer  little  reptile 
who  has  a  kind  of  front  door  which  he  slams  in  your  face, 
shutting  his  head  in  so  that  there  is  no  way  of  arguing  with 
him.  Frogs  and  toads  there  are  in  plenty,  too,  some  of  the 
latter  being  very  large  ;  but  we  must  get  on  to  the  insects. 
Of  these  the  most  fearsome  are  the  tarantulas,  the  commonly 
used  but  incorrect  name  for  the  largest  spider  known,  the 
Mygale  Hentzi,  a  black  hairy  creature  with  body  about  the 
size  of  a  two-shilling  piece  and  black  hairy  legs  two  inches 
long.  The  bite  of  these  spiders  is  really  dangerous,  although 
seldom  fatal  to  adults.  A  friend  of  ours  was  bitten  in  the 
wrist  by  one  some  three  years  ago.  His  arm  became  seriously 
inflamed  and  terribly  painful,  and  could  not  be  used  for  some 
months ;  and  even  now  he  still  suffers  pain  at  times  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  wound.  The  ruins  in  Yucatan  are  the 
happy  hunting  ground  for  these  monsters,  which  will  even 
attack  small  birds.  Scorpions  are  very  common,  too,  hiding 
by  day  under  stones  or  logs  or  in  the  crevices  of  house  walls. 
There  are  two  kinds,  a  black  and  a  white,  though  the  latter  is 
more  yellow  than  white.  We  never  saw  any  large  specimens, 
but  they  are  said  to  reach  seven  or  eight  inches  in  length. 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  377 

Their  sting  is  distinctly  dangerous,  and  we  heard  of  cases 
of  Indians  dying  through  it. 

The  jigger  or  chigoe  (to  give  it  the  more  correct  native 
name  from  which  the  first  is  a  corruption),  that  detestable 
flea  which  burrows  beneath  the  toenails  and  there  lays  its 
eggs,  is  common  in  Yucatan,  especially  on  the  east  coast.  It 
closely  resembles  the  common  flea  in  form,  though  it  is  much 
smaller.  The  sandal-shod  natives  are  particularly  Uable  to 
it,  and  of  the  Mexican  troops  at  Chan  Santa  Cruz  a  large  per- 
centage have  one  or  two  toes  missing.  In  the  south  of  the 
Peninsula  you  find  that  ciurious  insect  the  Praying  Mantis, 
so  caUed  in  allusion  to  the  attitude  of  its  forelegs,  which  are 
held  as  are  hands  in  prayer.  These  creatures  wage  remorseless 
war  on  one  another,  and  fight  until  the  stronger  literally  pulls 
its  foe's  head  off.  This  was  actually  witnessed  by  a  friend 
of  ours. 

That  detestable  insect  the  centipede  is  common  in  Yu- 
catan, and  not  the  harmless  type  to  which  one  is  accustomed 
in  an  English  garden,  but  a  formidable  creature  half  a  foot 
or  more  long.  You  find  the  Scohpendra  castaniceps  of  a 
greenish  colour  with  a  chestnut-tinted  head  averaging  six 
inches,  and  in  the  south  the  giant  centipede  {Scolopendra  gigas) 
which  is  sometimes  a  foot  long.  Humboldt,  in  his  Personal 
Narrative,  says  that  he  saw  Indian  children  pull  centipedes 
out  of  the  ground  and  eat  them  ;  but  the  present-day  Indians 
fear  and  avoid  them  as  much  as  they  do  a  scorpion.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  their  bite  is  very  poisonous,  and  even  often 
dangerous. 

The  ants  of  Yucatan  are  wonderful,  except  when  you 
have  the  misfortune  to  get  them  on  you,  when  you  forget  to 
admire  them  in  the  torrents  of  blasphemy  which  their  bites 
evoke.  We  came  across  four  types,  a  pitch-black  small  tree- 
ant,  which  appeared  to  hve  principally  beneath  the  shelter 
of  the  bark  of  rotting  trees  ;  a  big  yellow  fellow  often  nearly 
an  inch  long,  a  large  black  ant,  and  a  smaller  reddish  black  ant. 
The  third  kind,  a  broad-mandibled  digging  ant,  called  by  the 
Indians  zay  (pronounced  tzay),  infests  the  woods  of  Yucatan 
to  an  almost  incredible  degree,  honeycombing  the  roadways 
to  such  an  extent  in  some  places  that  you  sink  almost  to  your 
knee  in  the  loose  red  earth.  Sometimes  in  the  woods  you  will 
come  across  patches  an  acre  or  two  in  extent  of  loosened  earth 
dotted  here  and  ther?.  with  hillocks  thrown  up  by  these  tiny 
excavators.     They  carry  out   their   operations,  too,  among 


378  THE   AMERICAN    EGYPT 

the  ruins ;  but  their  work  is  distinctly  unscientific,  and 
many  interesting  memorials  of  the  ancient  Mayans  have  been 
destroyed  by  these  insect  vandals. 

More  than  this,  they  actually  make  paths  through  the 
woods.  As  you  follow  an  Indian  trail  you  will  of  a  sudden 
come  to  a  place  where  it  is  crossed  by  quite  a  distinct  path, 
traceable  for  yards.  Sometimes  you  actually  find  them 
travelling  on  these  paths.  One  evening  in  the  woods  near 
Occeh  we  came  across  a  procession  of  ants  or,  to  write  cor- 
rectly, two  processions  of  ants  ;  for  there  was  one  set  going 
in  "  foUow-my-leader  "  style  across  the  road  one  way,  and 
another  set  going  the  other  way.  It  was  interesting  to  see 
that  the  insects  never  stepped  out  of  the  ranks.  One  set  were 
carrying  each  a  piece  of  leaf  which  they  held  up  over  them 
(it  was  about  half  an  inch  square)  like  a  huge  sail.  Some  of 
them  were  literally  staggering  under  the  weight  of  the  pieces 
of  leaf,  but  they  never  dropped  them.  The  other  set  were 
returning  into  the  wood  "  empty-handed  "  to  get  fresh  loads. 
For  a  long  time  we  watched  these  ordered  ranks,  and  we  had 
the  curiosity  to  follow  them  into  the  wood,  where  we  found 
them  actually  at  work  on  a  leafy  shrub,  chewing  off  the  pieces 
and  chmbing  down  with  them,  and  then  without  the  least 
confusion  taking  their  places  in  the  marching  line  of  the  loaded 
party.  It  is  possible  that  these  ants  are  to  be  identified  with 
those  called  by  Henry  Walter  Bates  [Naturalist  on  the  Amazons  : 
1863)  the  umbrella  ant  of  Brazil,  which  he  says  "  thatches 
its  large  mansion  (sometimes  40  yards  in  circumference  and 
2  feet  high)  with  circles  of  leaf  cut  with  accurate  precision  from 
coffee  and  orange  trees,  which  they  oftentimes  strip  bare  to 
carry  out  their  bold  architectural  design."  It  seemed  to  us, 
however,  more  likely  that,  as  was  observed  by  Thomas  Belt 
{Naturalist  in  Nicaragua  :  1874),  the  leaves  are  gathered  as 
provisions  and  are  stored  till  their  decay  generates  a  fungus 
upon  which  the  ant  feeds. 

The  cockroaches  of  Yucatan  are  truly  tropical,  and  grow 
to  a  great  length.  We  saw  some  between  two  and  three  inches 
long.  The  little  village  stores  throughout  Yucatan  are  in- 
fested with  these  pests,  and  one  day  when  purchasing  some 
bananas,  on  the  storekeeper  lifting  up  the  lid  of  the  wooden 
bin  in  which  the  fruit  was  kept,  it  sounds  incredible,  but  one 
could  scarcely  see  the  fruit,  such  hundreds  of  them  filled  the 
bin.  In  the  ruins  you  constantly  find  hornets'  nests  hanging 
against  the  walls  almost  like  swallows'  nests,  and  if  they  happen 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  379 

to  be  "  at  home  "  and  do  set  about  you,  the  only  thing  is 
to  run.  Yucatan  is  very  rich  in  dragonflies.  They  seem  of 
almost  all  colours.  Those  we  noticed  most  were  one  of  electric 
blue,  one  of  grass  green,  and  one,  apparently  rare,  almost  red. 
At  nights  the  trees  are  alight  with  fireflies.  As  we  sat  in  the 
clearing  in  our  forest  home  on  Cozumel,  it  looked  as  if  armies 
of  Indians  with  lanterns  were  concentrating  on  us  from  all 
points  of  the  belt  of  dark  woodland.  The  light  these  insects 
give  is  undoubtedly  strong,  though  we  had  not  the  luck  to 
see,  as  did  Stephens  at  Palenque,  "  '  lightning-bugs,'  four  of 
which  together  threw  a  brilliant  light  for  several  yards  around, 
and  by  the  light  of  a  single  one  we  read  distinctly  the  finely 
printed  pages  of  an  American  newspaper."  No  account  of 
a  Yucatecan  night  would  be  complete  without  mentioning 
the  wonderful  chorus  of  crickets  which  sing  from  sunset  until 
the  eastern  sky  fades  into  the  grey  of  dawn.  It  is  literally  a 
chorus,  for  there  must  be  thousands  of  the  insects  contributing 
to  the  endless  serenading  of  the  lady  crickets. 

An  hour  after  the  sun  is  up  and  the  dew  has  disappeared 
before  the  rapidly  increasing  heat  of  the  wonderful  tropic 
sunshine,  the  Yucatecan  woodlands  become  beautiful  with 
those  most  exquisite  of  all  God's  creatures,  the  butterflies. 
There  was  a  great  deal  in  Yucatan  which  was  very  disappoint- 
ing ;  there  was  much  which  was  actually  heartbreaking  ;  but 
however  footsore,  tired,  and  hungry  we  were,  we  found  it 
impossible  not  to  momentarily  forget  our  troubles  in  our 
admiration  for  these  flying  triumphs  of  Heaven's  paint-box. 
Alas  !  we  are  not  possessed  of  any  scientific  knowledge,  and 
all  that  this  chapter  attempts  is  to  indicate  "  the  birds,  beasts 
and  fishes  "  one  sees  in  travelling  through  the  Peninsula,  and 
thus  we  cannot  give  the  scientific  names  for  these  marvellous 
insects.  Perhaps  it  is  as  well,  for  it  is  really  a  kind  of  desecra- 
tion to  label  some  fairy  form  of  amber  and  blue  with  a 
hendecasy liable  name,  the  pronunciation  of  which  can  only 
be  mastered  after  months  of  practice. 

Most  beautiful  of  all  was  a  monster  of  sky  blue,  all  four 
wings  framed  with  a  dehcate  border  of  black.  He  must  have 
measured  five  inches  from  wing-point  to  wing-point.  Exquisite, 
too,  were  the  striped  butterflies  :  some  striped  scarlet  and 
black,  some  white  and  black,  some  yellow  and  black.  The 
daintiness  of  these  combinations  was  past  all  description. 
The  forest  paths  were  bright,  too,  with  wonders  of  yellow ; 
amber  and  orange,  sulphur-tinted  and  palest  lemon,  huge 


58o  THE  AMERICAN   EGYPT 

butterflies  fluttered  before  our  horses,  such  miracles  of  Nature's 
painting  as  made  the  woodland  seem  a  fairyland  of  colour. 
One  of  the  commonest  (it  seems  an  insult  to  use  the  adjective, 
it  was  so  beautiful)  of  Yucatan's  butterflies  was  one  with  body 
and  inner  portions  of  the  wings  all  black  and  the  outer  parts 
a  brilliant  scarlet,  a  combination  giving  it  as  it  flew  the  appear- 
ance of  a  daintily  slender  bobbin  or  reel  of  vermilion.  And 
amid  all  this  riot  of  colour  were  some  quite  as  enchanting 
in  the  Quaker-like  sobriety  of  their  tints.  One  specially 
struck  us  :  a  triumph  of  silver  greys  and  browns,  a  veritable 
incarnation  of  Autunm.  But  enough !  Neither  glowing 
epithets  nor  the  dry-as-dust  names  given  them  by  entomolo- 
gists can  do  justice  to  Yucatan's  butterflies  :  you  must  go 
and  see  them  for  yourself  to  realise  their  beauty. 

One  of  the  most  startlingly  beautiful  birds  in  Yucatan 
is  the  cardinal  bird,  a  large  finch  of  a  gorgeous  red  even  to  its 
beak,  its  face  alone  being  black  around  the  base  of  the  bill 
and  on  the  upper  throat.  But  the  full  glories  of  its  scarlet 
coat  are  the  prerogative  of  the  male,  for  the  female  is  a  far 
duller  colour.  Species  of  the  bird  are  common  in  the  warmer 
parts  of  the  States,  where  it  is  often  known  as  the  Virginia 
Nightingale,  in  allusion  to  its  powers  of  song.  The  Yucatecan 
specimen,  about  a  foot  long,  makes  a  wonderful  spectacle  as 
it  flashes  through  the  blaze  of  sunshine. 

But  if  Yucatan  has  to  share  her  cardinal  bird  with  the 
more  southern  States  of  America,  she  can  claim  to  have  all 
to  herself,  and  the  Central  American  countries  neighbouring 
her,  perhaps  one  of  the  most  beautiful  birds  in  the  world,  the 
Meleagris  ocellata,  the  ocellated  turkey,  so  called  in  allusion 
to  the  ocelli  or  eyes,  much  like  those  of  a  peacock,  marking  its 
plumage,  which  is  of  blue,  brown,  and  gold.  Its  bare  head  is 
a  deep  blue  studded  with  caruncles  of  an  orange  colour,  and 
it  has  no  ugly  dewlap  as  has  the  common  turkey,  than  which 
it  is  much  smaller.  This  wonderful  bird  is  fairly  common  in 
Yucatan,  but  is  very  shy  and  keeps  to  the  woods.  A  bird 
far  more  common,  and  a  vivid  contrast  in  the  sobriety  of  its 
feathering  to  this  glorious  fowl,  is  a  species  of  guan  {Ortalis 
vetula  maccalli),  known  in  Spanish  America  as  the  chachalaca 
in  allusion  to  its  astoundingly  loud  cry.  They  are  about  the 
size  of  a  hen  pheasant,  the  wings  and  body  of  a  brown  shading 
to  a  greeny  grey  with  a  lighter  grey-brown  belly.  They  may 
be  said  to  be  the  great  game  birds  of  Yucatan  as  far  as  eating 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  381 

goes,  and  their  flesh  tastes  much  Hke  pheasant.  They  are 
pretty  birds  until  they  speak,  and  one  often  sees  them  tame 
in  the  Indian  villages.  Of  the  same  family  of  gallinaceous 
birds  {Cractda)  to  which  the  chachalaca  belongs,  the  curassows 
and  hoccos  found  in  Yucatan  are  members.  Both  the  red 
curassow  and  the  globose  curassow  are  fairly  common ;  the 
natives  call  them  kamhul.  Another  type  of  curassow  is  the 
latter-mentioned  hocco,  a  name  said  to  be  a  native  word  in 
Guiana.  This  bird  we  shot  on  the  east  coast.  It  is  a  magnifi- 
cent creature  as  big  as  a  large  turkey,  feathered  in  gold  and 
brown,  its  head  crested.  Partridge  and  quail  are  said  to  be 
plentiful,  but  we  did  not  come  across  them. 

One  of  the  commonest  yet  one  of  the  prettiest  birds  in  the 
Peninsula  is  a  jay  {Cyanocitta  yucatanica)  which  goes  about 
in  small  flocks.  They  are  about  the  size  of  a  large  blackbird, 
but  with  a  longer  tail.  The  head  and  the  belly  are  black 
and  the  back,  wings,  and  tail  are  of  a  beautiful  electric  blue. 
The  legs  are  yellow,  and,  like  the  English  blackbird,  the  male 
has  a  yellow  beak  and  the  female  a  black  one.  The  Mayans 
call  them  tchel  and  are  always  keen  to  kill  them,  for  they  are 
very  destructive  to  the  crops  ;  but  nothing  could  well  exceed 
the  beauty  of  a  dozen  of  them  darting  from  treetop  to  tree- 
top  in  the  early  morning  sunshine. 

Of  hawks  there  are  many  species.  One  large  black  one 
found  in  Cozumel  is  rare,  but  a  common  one  which  we 
specially  noticed  in  that  island  is  a  beautifully  marked  bird 
of  black  and  brown  which  is  said  to  belong  to  the  same 
division  of  hawks  as  the  hobby-falcon  of  Europe.  It  is 
about  a  foot  long  with  a  fairly  long  tail.  The  curious  point 
about  it  was  its  astounding  boldness.  It  would  sit  on  a  tree 
a  few  yards  ahead  of  you,  and  when  you  came  up  and  stood 
beneath  it,  refuse  to  be  scared  away.  On  the  eastern  beach 
of  Cozumel  one  of  these  birds  settled  on  a  fallen  tree  near  us, 
and  refused  to  go  although,  of  course  without  any  desire 
to  actually  hurt  it,  we  pelted  it  with  small  pebbles.  This 
hawk  has  a  curiously  insistent  and  weirdly  plaintive  cry,  with 
which  the  woods  of  Cozumel  echo  all  day.  We  never  saw 
it  actually  strike  at  small  birds,  and  certainly  its  warning 
scream  was  calculated  to  give  the  most  careless  finch  a  good 
chance  of  escape. 

Of  owls  there  was  one  of  the  large  wood  variety,  and 
there  are  said  to  be  two  peculiar  to  the  country,  neither  of 
them  much  more  than  six  inches  long,  of  a  generally  tawny 


382  THE   AMERICAN   EGYPT 

colour  and  lighter  on  the  bellies.  In  parrots  Yucatan  is 
rich,  the  finest  being  the  white-crowned  parrot,  its  plumage 
being  green,  blue,  red,  white,  and  yellow.  The  red-and-blue 
macaw  is  known,  though  rare  ;  but  the  woods  are  everywhere 
full  of  the  green  parrot  or  parakeet,  dainty  little  creatures 
who  usually  go  about  in  pairs,  but  sometimes  are  seen  flocking 
and  are  for  ever  screaming  and  chattering  as  they  fly. 

You  see  the  common  American  kingfisher,  some  twelve  inches 
long  with  plumage  of  blue,  white,  spotted  and  barred,  the  head 
crested,  sitting  sometimes  above  the  cenotes.  Of  wood- 
peckers there  are  several  varieties,  the  commonest  appearing 
to  be  the  red-headed  or  crested  woodpecker.  If  you  have 
luck  (we  did  not  have  it),  you  can  see  in  the  Yucatecan  wood- 
land the  wonderful  Trogon  resplendens,  scientifically  associated 
with  the  family  of  woodpeckers.  There  are  some  fifty  species 
of  Trogons,  but  the  most  remarkable  is  the  Yucatecan  one, 
the  Quetzal,  a  sacred  bird  in  Central  America,  the  plumage  of 
which  is  a  gorgeous  golden  green,  its  tail  being  in  the  male 
nearly  three  feet  long,  though  the  bird  is  about  the  size  of  a 
pigeon.  This  Trogon  in  the  sheen  of  its  plumage  almost  rivals 
the  beauty  of  the  humming-birds.  Of  the  latter  there  are 
many  to  be  seen  in  Yucatan,  but  it  really  needs  a  poet  to  de- 
scribe these  winged  jewels  of  the  woodland.  As  we  sat  on  the 
verandah  at  Chichen  prosaically  eating  breakfast,  amid  the 
pink  San  Diego  blossoms  which  clustered  round  the  house  was 
a  perpetual  whirr  of 

"Pinions  of  pale  green,  melting  to  black 
By  bronze  and  russet  passages." 

One  really  is  obliged  to  fall  back  upon  quotation  in  speaking 
of  these  tiny  creatures,  which  seem  veritably  "  plumaged  from 
rainbows." 

We  have  spoken  of  the  sleek  little  piches  which  chattered 
in  the  trees  of  the  plaza  at  Vera  Cruz.  There  were  any  number 
of  these  in  Yucatan,  and  a  much  larger  black  bird,  probably 
akin,  infesting  gardens  and  distinguished  by  the  most  liquid 
and  mellifluous  note  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  Swallows,  too, 
though  they  seemed  somewhat  larger  than  the  ordinary 
swallow,  were  common  everywhere  ;  while  a  bird,  which  we 
think  belonged  to  the  cuckoo  family,  often  startled  us  when  at 
work  on  the  ruins  by  a  reiterated  whistle  which  sounded  like 
mocking  laughter  dying  away  in  a  choking  spasm  of  mirth. 

The  coasts  of  the  Peninsula  are  rich  with  seafowl,  so  many 


FLORA   AND   FAUNA  383 

and  so  varied  that  it  would  need  a  skilled  ornithologist  and 
many  pages  to  chronicle  them  accurately.  There  are  duck  of 
all  lands,  mallard,  teal,  widgeon  ;  wild  geese,  bitterns,  herons, 
snipe,  sandpipers,  plovers,  curlews,  and  gulls  galore.  The 
bays  and  inlets  are  beautified  by  the  stately  ibis,  snowy  white 
or  slate-grey.  Flamingoes  are  rarer ;  and  indeed  a  flamingo 
standing  is  not  an  object  of  beauty,  for  he  is  altogether  too  long 
in  the  legs.  Moreover  his  beautiful  pink  plumage  is  seen  at 
its  best  when  he  is  in  flight.  As  hideous  as  they  are  common 
are  the  brown  pelicans.  In  their  way  they  are  as  detestable  as 
the  zopilotes  which  we  were  at  pains  to  describe  in  our  first 
chapter,  though  their  habits  are  not  so  filthy. 

We  really  have  no  space  to  say  much  of  the  fishes  (pelicans 
naturally  suggest  fishiness)  ;  but  we  ought  to  say  that  the 
brightest  jewel  in  the  fishy  crown  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  at 
least  from  the  gastronomic  point  of  view,  is  that  fish  which 
rejoices  in  the  name  of  Red  Snapper.  At  all  times  and  in  all 
places  you  can  get  it.  It  appears  to  have  no  close  season,  and 
whether  in  the  smart  restaurants  of  Mexico  or  Merida  or  in 
the  little  coast  cabins  of  the  fishing  Indians,  you  eat  it,  or  try 
to  till  nauseated.  The  Indians  are  clever  fishermen,  and 
catch  with  both  hook  and  net,  but  their  most  picturesque 
method  is  spearing.  They  paddle  their  dug-out  into  shallow 
waters,  stand  on  the  end  of  the  canoe,  and  thrust  a  spear  at 
the  fish.  This  spear  has  a  detachable  point  to  which  a  cord  is 
fastened.  They  scarcely  ever  miss,  and  the  struggling  prey 
is  hauled  in  by  the  string.  We  saw  a  man  land  half  a  dozen 
big  fish  in  little  more  than  as  many  minutes.  The  natives 
of  Chiapas  shoot  the  fish  from  the  end  of  the  canoe  with  bow 
and  arrow. 

If  a  hundred  people  who  have  not  travelled,  or  whose  travels 
have  been  confined  to  the  typical  Rhine,  Switzerland  and 
Riviera  tours  of  modem  Ufe,  were  asked  what  was  their  idea  of 
a  primeval  forest  in  the  tropics,  eighty  per  cent,  at  least  would 
declare  for  a  woodland  notable  for  giant  trees  beside  which 
the  forests  of  civilised  countries  would  seem  mere  park  en- 
closures. Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth.  The 
average  primeval  forest  in  the  tropics,  of  which  the  boundless 
woodlands  of  Eastern  Yucatan  are  a  fair  example,  are  dis- 
appointing in  the  extreme  from  the  very  fact  that,  though 
dense  to  a  degree  that  is  heartbreaking,  you  never  see  really 
noble  trees.  One  of  the  largest  trees  in  Yucatan  is  the  sapota 
{Achras  sapota).     This  is  an  evergreen  with  thick  shiny  leaves, 


384  THE  AMERICAN   EGYPT 

and  is  said  to  sometimes  reach  a  height  of  a  hundred  feet, 
but  we  cannot  say  that  we  ever  saw  one  so  high.  It  is  from 
the  sapota  that  there  is  obtained  the  chicle,  the  milky  juice  of 
the  tree  which  forms  the  basis  of  all  American  chewing-gums. 
The  chicleros,  as  the  cutters  are  called,  climb  the  tree,  cut 
broad  arrow-shaped  grooves  through  the  bark  pointing  ground- 
ward,  the  shaft  of  the  arrows  making  a  drainage  groove  down 
the  full  length  of  the  tree,  a  vessel  being  placed  at  the  foot 
imder  this  groove  to  catch  the  sap.  But  the  Mayans  do  not 
care  about  chicle.  They  like  the  sapota  because  it  produces 
a  fruit  of  which  they  are  passionately  fond.  And  no  wonder, 
for  it  is  really  very  pleasant  eating.  About  the  size  of  a  small 
apple  and  the  colour  of  a  medlar,  the  inside  is  a  reddish-brown 
pulp,  which  has  a  delicious  flavour. 

The  woods  of  Yucatan  are  full  of  acacias  of  many  species, 
among  them  the  logwood  [Hcematoxylon  campechianum) . 
Mahogany  is  found  and  is  especially  common  in  the  south, 
where  it  is  much  used  by  the  Indians  for  canoes,  the  whole 
trunk  being  hollowed  out.  The  leafiest  tree  in  the  country 
is  the  ceiba  {Bombax  ceiba),  called  by  the  Mayans  yaxche  or 
yastse.  This  noble  tree  often  attains  a  considerable  height, 
gives  an  extraordinary  shade,  and  has  ever  been  held  as  sacred 
by  the  Mayans.  It  figures  in  their  mythology.  Their  an- 
cestors believed  that  there  were  seven  heavens,  each  having 
a  hole  in  the  centre  and  each  immediately  above  the  other. 
A  ceiba  was  believed  to  stand  in  the  centre  of  the  earth,  and 
its  branches  grew  through  the  successive  holes  in  the  seven 
heavens  until  the  leaves  reached  the  highest.  By  the  branches 
of  the  tree  the  dead  climbed  through  the  series  of  heavens 
until  they  reached  the  utmost  Mayan  paradise.  There  is  a 
tradition  that  a  ceiba  grew  in  Valladolid.  It  was  cut  down 
but  sprouted  again,  having  this  time  four  boughs  each  directed 
to  a  cardinal  point.  A  hawk  had  its  home  on  the  highest 
branch,  and  the  bird  was  considered  to  be  the  spirit  of  the 
tree,  its  cry  of  "  suki,  suki,"  it  is  said,  having  given  the  ancient 
Indian  town  Zaci,  on  the  site  of  which  Valladohd  was  built, 
its  name.  There  is  another  tree  which  rivals  the  ceiba  in 
shadiness,  but  this  you  only  see  on  the  haciendas  which  have 
been  long  in  cultivation.  It  is  a  laurel  introduced  into  the 
Peninsula  from  Cuba  some  forty  years  ago  by  a  Spaniard 
named  Cervera.  His  grandson,  appropriately  enough,  showed 
us  at  Yaxche  near  Merida  the  finest  examples  we  saw,  laurels 
so  large  and  leafy  as  to  rival  in  size  and  shade  our  forest  beech. 


FLORA    AND    FAUMA  385 

They  were  probably  the  Portugal  Laurel  {Cerasus  lusitanica 
or  Ficus  laurifolia). 

A  fairly  large  tree  is  the  mamey  {Lucuma  mammosa),  be- 
longing to  the  same  family  as  the  sapota,  and  bearing  a  fruit 
almost  rivalling  that  of  the  latter  in  popularity  among  the 
Indians.  It  is  egg-shaped,  with  a  rough  brown  skin,  and 
inside  is  a  pinky  pulp  tasting  like  quince  marmalade  with  a 
distinct  flavour  of  almond-paste  about  it.  By  a  beneficent 
dispensation  of  Providence  in  a  country  where  grass  cannot 
grow,  there  does  grow  a  tree,  the  ramon  {Alicastrum  Brownei), 
called  by  the  Mayans  6s,  upon  which  Yucatecan  horses  thrive. 
It  is  certainly  very  comforting  when  you  camp  for  the  night 
in  the  forest  to  be  able  to  send  the  Indians  to  cut  an  armful 
of  the  branches  thus  generously  provided  by  Nature's  baiting 
stable,  and  to  hear  your  cattle  contentedly  munching  it  while 
you  sup.  The  ramon  grows  fifty  to  sixty  feet  high  and  has  an 
abundance  of  evergreen  leaves  which  form  the  fodder.  The 
fruit  of  the  ramon  is  eaten  boiled  either  alone  or  mixed  with 
honey  or  Indian  corn,  and  the  milky  juice  is  used  medicinally 
in  cases  of  asthma.  Tree-palms  grow  everywhere  in  the  woods, 
some  of  them  reaching  eighty  feet.  The  more  common  kinds, 
notably  the  Sahal  mexicana,  called  by  the  Mayans  xaan, 
are  used  to  thatch  the  Indian  huts.  There  are  cocoanut  palms 
in  plenty,  particularly  on  the  islands.  From  the  Lignum 
vitcB  the  Indians  make  bows.  From  a  small  tree  {Pretium 
heptaphyllum)  the  ancient  Mayans  obtained  the  incense  used 
in  their  temples  which  they  called  i>om  and  which  the  Mexicans 
call  coped. 

In  fruit  trees  Yucatan  is  fairly  rich.  She  has  the  sweet 
and  sour  orange  in  plenty  and  the  lemon  and  lime,  the  latter 
of  which  often  grows  wild  in  the  woods.  Bananas  and  plantains 
are  everjrwhere.  A  small  variety  of  the  former,  the  banana- 
apple  {Musa  paradisiaca) ,  has  a  flavour  finer  than  the  Canary 
banana.  Then  there  is  the  Anona  squamosa  or  custard- apple, 
the  Anona  muricata  or  guanabana,  the  aguacate,  alligator 
pear  {Persea  gratissima),  the  caumita  and  the  papay  [Carica 
papaya),  called  by  the  Mayans  put,  of  which  the  fruit  is  pear- 
shaped,  about  a  foot  long,  of  an  orange-salmon  colour  and 
deliciously  juicy.  The  finest  pineapples  in  the  whole  of  the 
Mexican  Republic  are  said  to  be  those  grown  in  Cozumel,  and 
the  cultivation  of  cocoa,  which  grows  wild  throughout  Yucatan, 
is  being  seriously  taken  up.  There  are  one  or  two  types  of 
plums  cultivated  by  the  Mayans,  and  figs,  tamarinds  and 

25 


386  THE  AMERICAN  EGYPT 

mangoes  are  grown.  Camote,  a  kind  of  sweet  potato,  and 
tomatoes  are  produced,  usually  in  the  milpas  with  the  maize. 
Tobacco,  sugar-cane,  and  cotton  are  agricultural  products 
to  which  increasing  attention  is  being  given.  Many  kinds 
of  gourds  are  grown  by  the  Mayans.  Chief  among  these 
is  the  calabash  tree  {Crescentia  cujete),  the  gourd  of  which 
is  universally  used  in  Yucatan  in  its  entirety  as  a  drinking- 
bottle — the  Indians  carrying  them  slung  over  their  backs  full 
of  water — and  halved  as  drinking-cups  or  dippers,  and  is 
often  elaborately  carved  or  painted.  The  Spanish  name  for 
these  drinking-gourds  is  jicaras,  the  Mayans  calling  them  luts. 

The  flowers  of  Yucatan  are  disappointing.  They  suffer, 
as  do  the  larger  plants,  from  the  dryness  of  the  soil,  due  to 
the  fact  that,  heavy  as  the  rains  are  when  they  come,  they 
rapidly  drain  away  through  the  porous  limestone.  In  the 
gardens  of  cities  and  villages  you  see  roses,  the  gorgeous 
scarlet  trumpet-shaped  tulipans,  magnolias,  vari-coloured 
irises,  clematis  and  other  bright-tinted  creepers,  red  and  yellow 
foxglove-like  flowers,  and  over  all  and  everywhere  convol- 
vuluses, white,  purple,  and  blue.  Some  of  these  latter  are 
cultivated  by  the  Mayans  in  the  fields,  as  for  instance  a  small 
white  one  which  they  call  xtaventun,  from  the  honey  collected 
from  which  the  Indians  distil  an  alcoholic  drink  which  has 
a  soft  aromatic  smell  of  the  flower,  and  the  intoxicating  effect 
of  which  (it  is  enough  to  make  the  mouth  of  the  dipsomaniac 
water)  lasts  for  three  days  and  leaves  no  headache  behind  it  ! 

The  wild  flowers  are  for  the  most  part  small.  Amid  the 
ruined  cities  you  almost  always  find  quantities  of  the  small 
yellow  flower,  called  by  the  Mayans  xcanlol,  of  the  Tecoma 
stans,  a  shrubby  climber.  The  woodland  paths  everywhere 
are  bright  with  the  jasmine-like  amapola  ;  while  the  roadsides 
are  made  more  picturesque  by  a  climber  bearing  white  sweet- 
smelling  flowers.  At  Chichen  there  was  much  Salvia  coccinea, 
a  small  brilliant  scarlet-flowered  shrub  called  by  the  natives 
zic  xin.  Here  again  we  saw  Heliotr opium  parviflorum,  which 
the  Indians  call  xnaheax.  In  the  woods  you  see  many  orchids 
growing  like  mistletoe  on  the  trees.  Among  the  genera  met 
with,  the  Oncidium  and  Epidendrum  are  the  commonest,  and 
of  these  the  species  Schomburgkia  tibicina  and  the  Epidendrum 
bicorunium  are  those  oftenest  found.  We  saw  very  few  wild 
ferns.     Here  and  there  are  beautiful  flowering  cactuses. 


INDEX 


Acacia,  384 

Acanceh,  village,  Indian  ruins  at,  188 

Agave  Americana  (Maguey),  20,  362 

Agave  SisaleTtsis.     See  Henequen 

Agouti,  374 

Aguilar,  Jeronimo,  48,  82 

Akad-zib,  Chichen,  103 

Algonkins  and  Toltec  Theory,  246 

Alligators,  375  ;  carved  heads  of,  in 
ruins,  importance  of,  268 

Alphabet,  Mayan,  attempts  to  com- 
pose, 299 

America's  first  architects.  Who  were?, 

257 
American  Man,  age  of,  260 
Ants,  377 

Anuradhapura,  ruins  of,  Ceylon,  263 
Apalachians,   245 :     Mayans  branch 

of,  254 
Arawaks,  in  Cuba,  254 
Armadillos,  374 

Astronomy,  Mayan  knowledge  of,  314 
Athapascans,  Aztecs  branch  of,  245 
Aztecs,  arrival  in  Mexico,  247  ;  raids 

into  Honduras,  225  ;  influence  on 

Mayans,  296 

Bancroft,  H.,  on  Mexican  priests,  275 

Bats,  374 

Behring  Straits,  Was  America 
peopled  via  ?,  260 

Bharahat,  Stupa  of,  hand  as  sym- 
bolic decoration  on,  266 

Biologia  Centrali  Americana,  A.  P. 
Maudslay's  account  of  Quirigua 
in,  213  ;  Mayan  decorative  art  in, 
269 

Birds  of  Yucatan,  380 

Boro  Budor,  Palenque  resembles,  263 ; 
date  of  building,  280 

Bourbourg,  Abb6  Brasseur  de,  Mayan 
Alphabet  of,  299  ;    on  Day  Signs, 

304 
Bramhanan,     Java,      Crawfurd     on 

methods     of     building     at,     264  ; 

ground  plan  similaj  to  Copan,  285 
Brigands  in  Yucatan,  112 


Brinton,  Dr.  D.  G.,  on  tapir  worship, 
239 ;  on  baselessness  of  Toltec 
Theory,  244  ;  on  Mexican  tradi- 
tions, 249  ;  on  Mayan  origin,  254  ; 
on  sacred  footprints  in  Central 
America,  276  ;  on  Mayan  MSB., 
277  ;  on  Day  Signs,  304 ;  on 
meaning  of  glyphs,  312 ;  on 
"  Drum  Signs,"  314 

British  Government  and  Mexico, 
agreement  as  to  Mayans,  156 

British  Honduras,  Mayans  and,  156 

Brooks,  C.  Waldcott,  on  ocean 
currents,  278 

Buddhist  ruins  resemble  Central 
American  builidings,  263 

Bull-fighting  in  Yucatan,  356 

Butterflies,  379 

Caciques,  Ancient  Mayan,  227 
Calotmul,  village,  115 
Campeachy,  Spaniards  discover.  50 
Cancun  Island,  147  ;   ruins  on,  149 
Caracol      ("  Winding      Staircase "), 

Chichen,  100 
Cardinal  Bird,  380 
Cciroline  Islands,  ruins  on,  281 
Casa  de  las  Monjas,  Chichen,  10 1 
Castes,  Mayan  system  of,  277 
Castillo,  El,  Chichen,  87  ;  sacrifices 

at,  88 
Castillo,  Uxmal,  201 
Catoche,  Cape,  origin  of  name,  50  ; 

visit  to,  1 36 
Caumifa,  fruit,  73 
Cave,    H.    W.,    on   ruined   cities   of 

Ceylon,  269 
Caves  in  Yucatan,  251 
Ceibo  tree,  legend  of,  384 
Cenote    of    Sacrifice,    Chichen,    89  ; 

Spanish  report  on,  90  ;    dredging , 

92  ;   skulls  found  in,  92 
Centipedes,  377 
Chachalaca,  bird,  380 
Choc,  Mayan  god,  239 
Chac  Mool,  discovered  at  Chichen,  30 , 

99 


387 


388 


INDEX 


Chansenote,     Indian     village,     122  ; 

destruction  of,  157 
Chapultepec,  26  ;  park  of,  31 
Chaques,  priestly  order,  240 
Charnay,  D.,  visit  to  Menche,  222 
Chichanchob,  Chichen,  100 
Chichen  Itza,   Spaniards  reach,   51  ; 

history    of,     85 ;      description    of 

ruins,    87-103  ;     probable   age   of, 

290 
Chicle,  gum  of  Sapota  tree,  128 
Chilan  Balam,  books  of,  54,  315 
Chilans,  priestly  order,  240 
China,  Mayan  architecture  and,  261 
Christian,  F.  W.,  on  ruins  of  Caroline 

Islands,  281 
ChiiUunes,    subterranean    rooms    in 

ruins,  195 
Citas,  village,  83 
Coati,  231,  373 

Cocomes,  Caciques  of  Mayapan,  56 
Cockroaches,  378 
Codex  Cortesianus ,  "  snouted  mask  " 

in,  267 
Codex  Ramirez,  date  of  fall  of  Tula  in, 

245  note 
Codices,  Mayan,  315 
Columbus,  Yucatan  first  heard  of  by, 

47 

Cones,  Temple  of,  Chichen,  98 

Copal  as  offering  to  gods,  93  ;  shrub 
from  which  obtained,  385 

Copan,  ruins  of,  204  ;  Buddhist  sur- 
vivals at,  269  ;  Asiatic  influence 
at,  284  ;  absurdity  of  Itza  Theory, 
284  ;   probable  date  of,  287 

Cordoba,  Hernandez  de,  50 

Cortes,  expedition  to  Yucatan,  51  ; 
scene  of  first  landing  on  American 
mainland.  137 

"  Cozumel  Cross,"  79 

Cozumei  Island,  164  et  seq.  ;  ruins  in 
forest,  180 

Crawfurd,  John,  on  Buddhist  struc- 
tures in  Indian  Archipelago,  264  ; 
on  ruins  of  Bramhanan,  Java,  285 

Cresson,  Dr.  Hilbone  T.,  theory  as 
to  glyphs,  300 

Crickets,  379 

Cross,  Tablet  of  the,  Palenque,  219  ; 
probable  explanation,  270 

Cuba,  antiquities  of,  255 

Cuculcan,  Mayan  legendary  hero,  239 

Cunningham,  Sir  A.,  discovery  of 
Bharahat  Stupa  by,  266 

Curasson,  154,  381 

Customs  House,  Mexican,  7  ;  dis- 
honesty of,  355 

Cuyo  El.  Yucatan.  127 


Deer  in  Yucatan,  372 

Deschnev,    Russian    navigator,    dis 

covers  Behring  Straits,  260 
Diaz,   President   Porfirio,   genius  of, 

34  ;   sketch  of,  37-40  ;   signs  peace 

with     Yaquis,     161  ;      letter      of 

authors  to,  358 
Dogs     of     ancient     Mayans,     231 

Yucatecan  cruelty  to,  347 
Dragonflies,  379 
Dupaix,  report  on  Palenque,  216 

Egypt,  Mayan  architecture  and,  259 
Elephant  ?     Did     Mayans    worship, 

273 

Eskimos,  suggested  affinity  with 
Japanese,  260 

Espita,  town,  186 

Euryalus,  H.M.S.,  dunned  by  Mexi- 
cans, 354 

Evans,  Sir  John,  on  stone  imple- 
ments, 261 

Farming,  methods  of,  in  Yucatan,  323 

Fireflies,  379 

Fishing,  383 

Flamingoes,  383 

Flora  and  fauna  of  Yucatan,  368  et 
seq. 

Flowers  of  Yucatan,  386 

Foliated  Cross,  Temple  of,  Palenque, 
219  ;  probable  origin  of  design,  270 

Footprints,  sacred,  in  Central  Ameri- 
ca, 276 

Forstemann,  Prof.  E.,  on  tablet  of 
Cross,  Palenque,  220  ;  on  glyphs, 
300  ;   on  similarities  in  glyphs,  311 

Fournereau,  Lucien,  on  ruins  of 
Angkor,  272 

Foxes,  373 

Fruit-trees  of  Yucatan,  385 

Fuentes  y  Guzman,  F.  A.,  historian, 
204 

Fusang,"  "  Land  of  the,  fable  as  to, 
262 

Galindo,  Copan  first  surveyed  by,  208 
Gann,  Dr.  T.  W.,  discovery  of  Aztec 

wall-paintings    in    Honduras    by, 

225,  296 
Garrapatas,  cattle-louse,  112 
Garudas  in  Hindu  myth,  replicas  oi 

in  Mayan  carvings,  271 
Glyphs,  Mayan,  298  et  seq. 
Goodman,  J.  T.,  on  Mayan  Calendar, 

304  ;  on  date  of  Copan,  310 
"  Green     Gold     of     Yucatan."     See 

Henequen. 


INDEX 


389 


Gnjalva,    Juan   de,    51  ;    report   on 

Cozumel  by,  168 
Grunwedel,  I^of.  A.,  on  Buddhist  art 

in  India,  272 

Hardy,  R.  Spence,  on  American  and 
ancient  Buddhist  ruins,  262  ;  on 
Buddhist  wall-paintings,  265 

Haritri,  Hindu  Goddess  on  Palenque 
carvings,  272 

Hawks,  381 

Henequen,  cultivation  of,  361  «<  seq. 

Hermit  Crabs,  145 

Herrera,  historian,  on  Aztec  ball- 
game,  94 

Hieroglyphics,  Mayan,  298  et  seq. 

Hoco,  bird,  154 

Holboch,  island,  132 

Holpop,  Mayan  officicil,  228 

Huastecas,  Panuco  River  tribe,  origin 
of,  253 

Huitzopochtli,  Mexican  War-God,  88, 
296 

Hulneb,  Mayan  God,  239 

Humboldt,  collection  of  Mexican 
pictographs  by,  299 

Humming-birds,  382 

Hunab  Ku,  Mayan  Supreme  God,  239 

Ibis,  383 

Iguana,  374 

India,  Mayan  architecture  and,  262 

Itzamna,     Mayan    deity,     tapir    as 

symbol,  239 ;  importance  in  Mayan 

problem,  313 
Ixtlilxochitl,  on  Tula,  245  note ;  on 

downfall    of    Toltecs,    246    note ; 

credibility  of,  249 

Jade  carvings  at  Copan,  208  ;  burial 
with  dead,  by  Mayans,  277 

Jaguar,  370 

Japan  Current,  the,  importance  in 
Mayan  problem,  278 

Japan,  Mayan  architecture  and,  261 

Japanese,  suggested  affinity  with 
Eskimos,  260 

Jays,  381 

Jigger  flea,  377 

Juarros,  Domingo,  historian,  210 

Kabah,  ruins  of,  199 

Kantunil,  Indian  town  and  district, 

121 
Khmers,  280 
Kikil,  village,  122 

Kinch  Ahau  Haban,  Mayan  God,  239 
Kingfisher,  382 


Klaproth,  H.  J.  von,  on  "  Land  of  the 

Fusang,"  262 
Kuro  Siwa,   the  Japan  Current,  in 

Mayan  problem,  278 

Labcah,  village,  128 

Labna,  ruins  of,  194 

Lacandone  Indians,  222 

Landa,  Bishop,  on  evils  of  Spanish 
Conquest,  54 ;  on  sacrifices  at 
Chichen,  90  ;  destruction  of  Mayan 
MSS.  by,  298  note  ;  Mayan  alphabet 
of,  299 

Laurels,  384 

Le  Plongeon,  Dr.,  theory  as  to  Mayan 
civilisation,  258  ;  on  existence  of 
"  red  hand  "  in  India,  265;  Mayan 
alphabet  of,  300 

Li  Yen,  Chinese  historian,  on  "  Land 
of  the  Fusang,"  262 

"Lion-seat"  (Sinthasana)  of  Budd- 
hism in  Central  America,  271,  288 

Lizards,  374 

Lotus,  Buddhist,  in  Central  American 
carvings,  269 

Lund,  Dr.,  on  age  of  American  Man, 
260 

Madura,  ruins  of,  Dutch  Government 

Report  on,  270 
Maguey,  cactus,  20 
Malay  Peninsula,  Mayan  architecture 

and,  262 
Maler,  Teobert,  at  Piedras  Negras, 

224 
Mamey  tree,  385 
Mammoth,  existence  of  in  America, 

274 
Manatee,  374 
Manco  Capac,  first  Inca  King,    259 

note 
Marriage    among    ancient    Mayans, 

234  ;  among  Yucatecans,  341,  357 
Marshall  Islands,  281 
Maudslay,  A.  P.,  on  ruins  of  Copan, 

211  ;  on  Quirigua,  213  ;  discovers 

Menche,  222  ;  on  Mayan  decorative 

art,  269  ;  on  age  of  ruins,  286 
Mayan  alphabet,  attempts  to  form, 

299 

—  arch,  diagram  and  description,  264 

—  paintings  compared  with  Budd- 
histic, 265  ;  description  of,  316 

—  priests  and  Buddhism,  275 
Mayans,  Ancient,  226  et  seq.  ;  Who 

were  they  ?,  254  et  seq.  ;  army, 
227  ;  law  and  justice,  228  ;  social 
castes,  230  ;  slavery,  230];  domesti- 
cated animals,  231 ;  housing,  231  ; 


390 


INDEX 


hammock  unknown  to,  231  ;  com- 
mon lands,  231  ;  as  hunters,  232  ; 
adornment,  233,  318  ;  food,  233  ; 
marriage,  234 ;  education,  235 ; 
status  of  women,  235  ;  trade,  236  ; 
dancing,  237 ;  burial  customs,237  ; 
religion,  238  ;  calendar,  240,  301  ; 
problem  as  to  cradleland,  242  ; 
priests,  240,  275 ;  system  of  castes, 
277  ;  customs  evidencing  Eastern 
influence,  277  ;  building  methods 
of,  290  ;  hieroglyphics,  298  ;  know- 
ledge of  astronomy,  313 

Mayans,  Modern,  physical  appearance 
of,  118;  War  of  Extermination 
against,  156;  independence  recog- 
nised, 156;  Mexican  criminals  em- 
ployed against,  159 

Mayan  War,  Story  of,  1 56 

Mayapan,  ancient  Indian  capital,  56, 
188 

Mecca,  The  Mayan,  in  Cozumel,  164 

Meco,  El,  ruins  of,  143 

Menche,  ruins  of,  222  ;  probable  date 
of,  288 

Mercer,  H.  C,  on  caves  of  Yucatan, 
252  ;  on  Mayan  methods  of  build- 
ing, 292 

Merida,  City  of,  59 ;  cabs,  59 ; 
bells  in,  62  ;  cathedral,  64 ;  life 
in  plaza,  66  ;  old  street  signs,  67  ; 
water  supply,  68  ;  prison,  74-8  ; 
museum,  78-80 

Mexico,  relations  with  United  States, 
42  ;  future  of,  43  ;  government  of, 
37  ;  war  of  extermination  of  Mayans 
started  by,  157 

Mexico  City,  21  et  seq.  ;  cathedral,  24  ; 
Paseo  de  la  Reforma,  26  ;  hotels, 
27  ;  police,  28  ;  Guard,  Republican, 
28,  31  ;  funeral  cars,  29  ;  streets, 
29  ;  tramways,  29,  31  ;  museum, 
30 ;  officials,  33,  39  ;  justice,  ad- 
ministration of,  35  ;  prisons  36 

Mississippi  district.  Mounds  of,  255 

Molas,  pirate,  Cozumel  headquarters 
of.  166 

Monkeys,  372 

Monuments,  Conservator  of,  in 
Yucatan,  81 

Montejo,  Francisco  de,  51 

Morality,  Mayan,  334 

Morse,  Prof.  E.,  on  American  ethno- 
logy, 258  ;  pamphlet  quoted,  262  ; 
on  Asiatic  invasion  of  Central 
America,  278 

Mosquitoes  at  El  Meco,  144  ;  terrible 
nights  with,  174 

Mounds  on  East  Coast,  127 


Mounds,  Ohio,  Prof.  Thomas  on,  255 
Mujeres,  Isla  de,  50,  140 

Nacomes,  Mayan  priestly  order,  240 
Nahuatl,  D.  G.  Brinton  on  derivation 

of,  248  note 
Naual,  Myan  dance,  236 
Newberry,  Prof.,  on  prehistoric  man 

in  America,  274 
"  Norther,"  caught  in  a,  138 
Nunnery,  Chichen,  loi  ;  Uxmal,  200 
Nuns  in  Mayan  religion,  275 

Occeh,  sepulchral  mounds  at,  125 
Ocean  Currents,  importance  in  Mayan 

problem,  278 
Ohio  Mounds,  problem  of,  255 
Olas,     Buddhist,     on     Copan     and 

Quirigua  stelae,  269  ;    and  Mayan 

MSS.,  277 
Opichen,  carvings  in  cave  of,  252 
Orange  Walk,  Mayan  trade  with,  156 
Owls,  381 

Paintings,     Mayan     and     Buddhist 

compared,  265 
Palacio,  Diego,  report  on  Copan,  205 
Palenque,  ruins  of,  214  :    "  Crosses  " 

at,   possible  explanation  of,   270  : 

Orientalism  of,  271  ;  probable  date 

of.  287  ;  like  Boro  Budor,  287 
Palms.  385 
Panuco  River,  Huastecan  settlement 

on, 253 
Parrots,  382 

Pearson,  Sir  Weetman,  5,  42 
Peccary,  371 
Pelicans,  383 

Peonage  System,  abuses  of,  324 
Peru,    ruins    in,    probable    date    of, 

259  note 
Picuda,  fish,  146 
Piedras     Negras,     ruins     of,     224 ; 

probable  date  of,  287 
Pigeons,  House  of,  Uxmal,  200 
Pinzon,    Vincente   Yaflez,    discovers 

Yucatan,  47 
Pisote.     See  Coati. 
Poey,  Andres,  on  Cuban  antiquities, 

255 
Polonnaruwa,  Ceylon,  ruins  of,  268 
Praying  mantis,  377 
Prea  Khane.  Cambodian  ruins,  288 
Progreso,  Port  of  Yucatan,  57 
Puerto   Morelos,    156 ;     burning    of 

woods  by  Indians  at,  158 
Pulque,  20,  362 
Pyramids,    Buddhistic    and    Central 

American,  263 


INDEX 


391 


Quetzalcoatl,    97 ;     self-torture    by 

priests  of,  224 
Quintana  Roo,  Territory  of,  158 
Quirigua,   ruins  of,   212  ;    Buddhist 

survivals  at,  269  ;    probable  date 

of,  287 

Racoon,  373 

Ramon,  tree,  385 

"  Red  Hand,"  importance  of,  265 

Reefs,     Coral,     dangerous     passage 

through,  138 
Rio,  Antonio  del,  report  on  Palenque, 

214 
Rurales.  Mexican  country  police,  9, 

20,35 

Sahagun,  Father,  historian,  on  Tula, 

245  note 
San  Miguel,  Cozumel,  166  ;  ruins  at, 

169 
Sapota  tree,  383  ;  as  lintels,  294 
Sayil,  ruins  of,  196 
Schellhas,  P.,  on  Mexican  MSS.,  289 
Schoolcrait,  H.  R.,  on  "  red  hand," 

266 
Scorpions,  376 
Sea-fowl,  382 
Seler,  Prof.  E.,  on  Mayan  Calendar, 

304 
Sharks,  136 
Shell-heaps,  Japanese  and  American, 

261 
Shoshonees,  Aztecs  akin  to,  254 
Sisal  hemp,  361 
Slavery  among  Ancient  Mayans,  230 ; 

in  Yucatan  to-day,  321  et  seq. 
Snakes  in  Yucatan,  368 
"  Snouted  Mcisk  "  on  Mayan  ruins, 

267 
Squirrels,  373 

Solis,  Diaz  de,  discovers  Yucatan,  47 
Stephens,  J.  L.,  on  "  Cozumel  Cross," 

79  ;    on  sealed  rooms,  Sayil,  197  ; 

on  Copan  ruins,   205  et  seq  ;    on 

Palenque,  216  ;    on  "  red  hand," 

266 
Sugar-growing  in  Yucatan,  128 
Sun,  Temple  of,  Palenque,  219 
Sunda  script  and  Mayan  glyphs,  319 

Tables,  Temple  of,  Chichen,  98 

Tapir,  371  ;  worshipped,  105,  239  ; 
'  snouted  mask  "  symbol  of,  267  ; 
was  its  worship  a  Buddhist  sur- 
vival ?,  374 

Tarantula,  376 

Tel  Cuzaan,  god,  239 

Tennis  Court,  Chichen,  93 


Tenochtitlan,  founding  of,  249  note 
Thomas,   Prof.   Cyrus   W.,    on  Ohio 

Mounds,  255  ;  theory  as  to  glyphs, 

300 
Thompson,  Edward  A.,  86  ;   work  at 

Chichen,  96 
Ticul,  town,  189 
Tigers,  Temple  of,  Chichen,  95 
Tikal,  wood  lintel  at,  271 
Tissandier,  A.,  on  Boro  Budor  and 

Cambodian  ruins,  268 
Tizimin,  town,  116 
Tlachtli,  Aztec  game,  94 
Toltec  Theory,  243 
Toltecs,  no  evidence  for  existence  of, 

246  ;  Who  were  they  ?,  247 
Torrell,  Dr.,  on  affinity  of  Eskimos 

and  Japanese,  260 
Tortoises,  376 
Trees  of  Yucatan,  383 ' 
Trogon  resplendens,  382 
Tula,  place  in  Toltec  Theory,  243  ; 

site   of,    244 ;     Brinton   on,    244 ; 

date  of,  245  note 
Tuloon,  Indians  encamped  at,  157 
Tunkul,  Mayan  sacred  drum,  228 
Turkey,  ocellated,  380 
Turtles,  trade  in,  152 

Usumacinta,  ruins  on,  222 
Uxmal,  ruins  of,  200 

Valentini,  Dr.  Ph.  J.  J.,  on  Toltecs, 
246 

Valladolid,  town,  104 

Vega,  Garcilaso  de,  on  Peruvian 
ruins,  259 

Vera  Cruz,  5-1 1 

Vietia,  Spanish  chronicler,  credi- 
bility of,  249 

Volan,  Yucatecan  carriage,  terrors 
of  riding  in,  185 

Waldeck  on  tapir  worship,  239 
Williams,   Sir  Monier,   on  Buddhist 

monks,  275 
Woodpeckers,  382 
Writing,  Mayan,  Was  it  indigenous  ?, 

319 

Yaqui  Indians,  story  of  persecution 

of,  160 
Yaxchilan,     tower     like    those     at 

Angkor,  272 
"  Yucatan  Channel,"   graveyard  of, 

140 

Zapotecan  priests,  trances  of,  276  ; 
calendar  of,  304 


PRINTED  BY 

HAZELL,    WATSON   AND  VINEY,    LD., 

LONDON   AND    AYLESBURY, 

ENGLAND. 


